Knock at the Cabin’s original ending was much darker

polygon.com:

M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin fits neatly into the pattern of his past movies, particularly his religious-themed alien-invasion thriller Signs. At its heart, Signs grapples with religious faith and doubt, and what it means to experience a life-changing conviction that other people don’t share. Knock at the Cabin takes those ideas in grim directions, funneling them through a home invasion thriller that pits a quartet of true believers against a terrified family who sees them as violent, delusional fanatics.

Much of the movie hangs on the kinds of big questions that have always dominated religious conversations: What’s true, what should we take on faith, and how should we live as a result? But like Shyamalan’s other films that touch on religion, faith, destiny, and supernatural intervention, Knock at the Cabin at least suggests that there’s some form of hope and catharsis in belief. It isn’t exactly an uplifting or optimistic movie, but it’s a fairly spiritual one, suggesting that while belief and doubt naturally go hand-in-hand, it’s better to have faith than surrender to cynicism.

All of which is radically different from Paul Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, which Shyamalan and screenwriters Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman adapted for the movie. That book has a much darker ending — and a radically different message.

[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for Knock at the Cabin and The Cabin at the End of the World.]

Roughly the first half of Knock at the Cabin adapts The Cabin at the End of the World in almost line-for-line detail, with much of the dialogue transcribed directly from Tremblay’s book. Even the casting seems heavily inspired by Tremblay’s description of the characters.

Young