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M. Night Shyamalan's career has been a fascinating one to dissect over the past two-plus decades because of his immediate rise and creative downfall. He's a filmmaker who has had an extraordinary amount of pressure placed on his shoulders because of the success of his early run of movies, and the many that came after which didn't live up to his early promise.

His latest, "Knock at the Cabin" is a refreshing and thrilling outing for the director, likely due to the fact that the movie doesn't feel like his other recent work. Shyamalan (along with co-writers Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman) has adapted Paul G. Tremblay's novel "The Cabin at the End of the World" - this gives him a blueprint to work from, and "Knock at the Cabin" demonstrates that Shyamalan has a sturdier hand in the script department when he has a launching point.

The movie opens with a young girl named Wen (Kristen Cui) capturing grasshoppers in a field. She is approached by Leonard (Dave Bautista), who joins her in her grasshopper adventures and gets Wen to drop her guard in the stranger danger department. Wen is having fun with Leonard, but eventually detects he might not be up to any good. She runs back to the cabin to tell her fathers Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldrige) what Leonard just said to her.

Her dads are confused by her hysterics, but are immediately startled by a deafening knock at the door. Despite their best efforts, Leonard makes his way into the cabin, along with Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Redmond (Rupert Grint). They inform the family it's up to them to make a decision that would thwart a looming apocalypse. Naturally, Eric and Andrew aren't buying what they are selling.

The anxiety that shapes the entire movie begins moments in, when Bautista emerges in the field and his nice and welcoming demeanor towards Wen is immediately off-putting. Bautista has tried his hand at comedy and action, has a sizable role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but never has had a solidifying moment as a screen presence. That changes with "Knock at the Cabin," which allows him to play a range of emotions and not rely entirely on his physical stature.

"Knock at the Cabin" takes place almost entirely in the cabin, which gives Shyamalan the chance to create a tight and tense atmosphere in minimal space. There is a flashback component to the movie, which can be deflating in such tightly wound moments, but Shyamalan is able to snap back when the movie returns to the action inside the cabin.

Shyamalan has been slowly coming back into the public's good graces, and some of his recent movies have had their merits despite never matching the prior high points of his career. Perhaps it's finally time to stop holding him to the standard set in the 2000s, because it's impossible to capture what once was for the filmmaker. Instead, we can just celebrate "Knock at the Cabin" as a good time at the movies.