m night shyamalan the visit

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The Visit provides horror fans with a satisfying blend of thrills and laughs -- and also signals a welcome return to form for writer-director M. Night Shyamalan.

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M. Night Shyamalan

Olivia DeJonge

Ed Oxenbould

Deanna Dunagan

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M. Night Shyamalan had his heyday almost 20 years ago. He leapt out of the gate with such confidence he became a champion instantly. And then...something went awry. He became embarrassingly self-serious, his films drowning in pretension and strained allegories. His famous twists felt like a director attempting to re-create the triumph of " The Sixth Sense ," where the twist of the film was so successfully withheld from audiences that people went back to see the film again and again. But now, here comes " The Visit ," a film so purely entertaining that you almost forget how scary it is. With all its terror, "The Visit" is an extremely funny film. 

There are too many horror cliches to even list ("gotcha" scares, dark basements, frightened children, mysterious sounds at night, no cellphone reception), but the main cliche is that it is a "found footage" film, a style already wrung dry. But Shyamalan injects adrenaline into it, as well as a frank admission that, yes, it is a cliche, and yes, it is absurd that one would keep filming in moments of such terror, but he uses the main strength of found footage: we are trapped by the perspective of the person holding the camera. Withhold visual information, lull the audience into safety, then turn the camera, and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT? 

"The Visit" starts quietly, with Mom ( Kathryn Hahn ) talking to the camera about running away from home when she was 19: her parents disapproved of her boyfriend. She had two kids with this man who recently left them all for someone new. Mom has a brave demeanor, and funny, too, referring to her kids as "brats" but with mama-bear affection. Her parents cut ties with her, but now they have reached out  from their snowy isolated farm and want to know their grandchildren. Mom packs the two kids off on a train for a visit.

Shyamalan breaks up the found footage with still shots of snowy ranks of trees, blazing sunsets, sunrise falling on a stack of logs. There are gigantic blood-red chapter markers: "TUESDAY MORNING", etc. These choices launch us into the overblown operatic horror style while commenting on it at the same time. It ratchets up the dread.

Becca ( Olivia DeJonge ) and Tyler ( Ed Oxenbould ) want to make a film about their mother's lost childhood home, a place they know well from all of her stories. Becca has done her homework about film-making, and instructs her younger brother about "frames" and "mise-en-scène." Tyler, an appealing gregarious kid, keeps stealing the camera to film the inside of his mouth and his improvised raps. Becca sternly reminds him to focus. 

The kids are happy to meet their grandparents. They are worried about the effect their grandparents' rejection had on their mother (similar to Cole's worry about his mother's unfinished business with her own parent in "The Sixth Sense"). Becca uses a fairy-tale word to explain what she wants their film to do — it will be an "elixir" to bring home to Mom. 

Nana ( Deanna Dunagan ), at first glance, is a Grandma out of a storybook, with a grey bun, an apron, and muffins coming out of the oven every hour. Pop Pop ( Peter McRobbie ) is a taciturn farmer who reminds the kids constantly that he and Nana are "old." 

But almost immediately, things get crazy. What is Pop Pop doing out in the barn all the time? Why does Nana ask Becca to clean the oven, insisting that she crawl all the way in ? What are those weird sounds at night from outside their bedroom door? They have a couple of Skype calls with Mom, and she reassures them their grandparents are "weird" but they're also old, and old people are sometimes cranky, sometimes paranoid. 

As the weirdness intensifies, Becca and Tyler's film evolves from an origin-story documentary to a mystery-solving investigation. They sneak the camera into the barn, underneath the house, they place it on a cabinet in the living room overnight, hoping to get a glimpse of what happens downstairs after they go to bed. What they see is more than they (and we) bargained for.

Dunagan and McRobbie play their roles with a melodramatic relish, entering into the fairy-tale world of the film. And the kids are great, funny and distinct. Tyler informs his sister that he wants to stop swearing so much, and instead will say the names of female pop singers. The joke is one that never gets old. He falls, and screams, "Sarah McLachlan!" When terrified, he whispers to himself, " Katy Perry ... " Tyler, filming his sister, asks her why she never looks in the mirror. "Your sweater is on backwards." As he grills her, he zooms in on her, keeping her face off-center, blurry grey-trunked trees filling most of the screen. The blur is the mystery around them. Cinematographer Maryse Alberti creates the illusion that the film is being made by kids, but also avoids the nauseating hand-held stuff that dogs the found-footage style.

When the twist comes, and you knew it was coming because Shyamalan is the director, it legitimately shocks. Maybe not as much as "The Sixth Sense" twist, but it is damn close. (The audience I saw it with gasped and some people screamed in terror.) There are references to " Halloween ", "Psycho" (Nana in a rocking chair seen from behind), and, of course, " Paranormal Activity "; the kids have seen a lot of movies, understand the tropes and try to recreate them themselves. 

"The Visit" represents Shyamalan cutting loose, lightening up, reveling in the improvisational behavior of the kids, their jokes, their bickering, their closeness. Horror is very close to comedy. Screams of terror often dissolve into hysterical laughter, and he uses that emotional dovetail, its tension and catharsis, in almost every scene. The film is ridiculous  on so many levels, the story playing out like the most monstrous version of Hansel & Gretel imaginable, and in that context, "ridiculous" is the highest possible praise.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Visit (2015)

Rated PG-13 disturbing thematic material including terror, violence and some nudity, and for brief language

Kathryn Hahn as Mother

Ed Oxenbould as Tyler Jamison

Benjamin Kanes as Dad

Peter McRobbie as Pop-Pop

Olivia DeJonge as Rebecca Jamison

Deanna Dunagan as Nana

• M. Night Shyamalan

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The Visit review: the most shocking M. Night Shyamalan twist is a good movie

• By Bryan Bishop
• on September 10, 2015 10:18 am

A decade ago it was impossible to discuss supernatural thrillers without invoking the name of M. Night Shyamalan. After exploding into the popular consciousness with The Sixth Sense , the writer-director staked his claim with carefully crafted follow-ups like Signs and Unbreakable , eventually leading Newsweek to dub him “The Next Spielberg.” But Shyamalan faltered soon thereafter, and by the time his sci-fi adaptation After Earth rolled around two years ago, his name was practically being hidden in studio marketing materials .

With irrelevancy lurking in the shadows, like one of his fictional boogeymen, the director needed to save his career. So Shyamalan switched things up — trying his hand at television with the quirky Wayward Pines , and leaving Hollywood behind altogether for his new movie The Visit . As the filmmaker told us in July , The Visit was a completely self-funded affair, with Shyamalan putting up the money so he could make a smaller film in relative secrecy without the interference of studios or outside influences. The result is the best snapshot we have of Shyamalan the filmmaker as he stands today.

Judging from the bonkers mix of horror and comedy that is The Visit , he may have gone totally insane — and that’s a wonderful thing.

The movie follows 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (a hilarious Ed Oxenbould). Their mother, played by Kathryn Hahn, is still suffering in the wake of her recent divorce, and to give everyone some space, the kids go off for a week to visit their grandparents for the very first time. Nana and Pop Pop (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) are warm, if not a bit quirky, at first, but as the visit stretches on, it becomes clear that something is very, very wrong.

Yes, The Visit is a found footage movie, and it’s the first clue that this is a break from the Shyamalan we’ve seen before. As a director, he built his career on meticulously crafted shots and camera moves that carried an almost mathematical precision, but that’s all thrown out the window here. Becca is an aspiring filmmaker, intent on documenting the visit for her mom, and as she enlists Tyler to help, the film takes on a chaotic visual energy that adds a layer of unease when contrasted with Shyamalan’s methodical pace. Where it differs from the Paranormal Activities of the world is that it’s actually beautiful at times; very often Shyamalan simply can’t help but find a gorgeous way to light a scene or evoke a mood, and it keeps the film fresh where the sub-genre has otherwise been pummeled into the ground and left for dead.

But visual technique is only worth so much, and what makes The Visit tick is the two young lead actors, who after a bumpy start settle into their self-conscious, found footage groove. DeJonge is grounded and believable as the older sister, her character endlessly precious and pretentious about her own filmmaking in what feels like Shyamalan having a laugh at himself for once. Oxenbould’s Tyler, on the other end, is the film’s comedic engine; a junior high suburbanite with hip-hop aspirations (he calls himself "T-Diamond Stylus") that deploys a comical adolescent bravado to cover up struggles with his parents’ separation.

Laughs and scares stack in a Jenga of oddball entertainment

That’s the other big surprise here: The Visit is actually funny , and not in a passing joke kind of way. It’s wild and outrageous, stacking laughs and scares atop one another in a giant Jenga of oddball entertainment. Contrasted with the overthought restraint of Shyamalan’s earlier work, The Visit is the Wild West; the kind of movie that uses a character’s unnerving penchant for skulking around nude as both a running joke and surprise scare, and that takes another’s obsessive tendencies and pays them off with a scatalogical gag that had me laughing and cringing in equal measure. It doesn’t always work — the mix is so bizarre that some jokes simply fail to land — but there’s a giddy energy that courses through the movie from beginning to end.

More than anything else, it feels like Shyamalan Unleashed, operating without the weight of expectations for the first time in years. The filmmaker had actually focused on smaller, character-driven films before The Sixth Sense changed his career trajectory, but ever since that early success, his movies seemed to chase the same formula, twist endings and all. The Visit doesn’t seem concerned with living up to those expectations — there’s no mistaking this for a Spielbergian tale — and it’s a fresher story for it.

If The Visit was some midnight movie festival discovery, we’d be talking about its odd weirdness and the potential of its creator; we’d ask if they could take the promise of this small, indie film and transition into the land of big-scale studio movies. Oddly enough, it’s the same question that should be asked of Shyamalan now. But for the moment, he appears to be keeping things small. His next film is set to be another collaboration with Jason Blum, the low-budget horror producer behind Insidious and the Paranormal Activity films, and while people will certainly have higher expectations his next time out, I hope we see more of this weirder, care-free Shyamalan. He may not be making The Sixth Sense anymore, sure, but for the first time in a very long time, he’s making movies that are actually fun .

The Visit opens Friday, September 11th.

Verge Video: The Verge's interview with M. Night Shyamalan

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With ‘The Visit,’ M. Night Shyamalan Returns to His Filmmaking Roots

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By Brooks Barnes

• Aug. 18, 2015

LOS ANGELES — “I don’t know, bro. I was screwed up in the head.”

M. Night Shyamalan, ruminating last month about career choices gone wrong, spoke those words and then burst into a giddy giggle. Just kidding! But the tenderness in his eyes betrayed him: There was some truth in that tease.

In contrast to his first four studio movies, which were all substantial hits, starting with “The Sixth Sense” in 1999, Mr. Shyamalan’s last four films have been a series of misfires. “Lady in the Water,” “The Happening,” “The Last Airbender” and “ After Earth ” severely tarnished his reputation among moviegoers. The guy who brought us those clunkers — and, yes, we know, “The Sixth Sense” — wants us to buy tickets again?

But here comes a hairpin twist nobody anticipated: Mr. Shyamalan, 45, seemingly humbled and more mature, took a hard look at his professional life, made a course correction, and the result, a quirky comedic thriller called “ The Visit ,” may well deliver a surprise cinematic comeback, or at least the start of one.

After getting beaten bloody two years ago for “After Earth,” a father-and-son outer-space adventure starring a real-life father and son, Will Smith and Jaden Smith, Mr. Shyamalan detoured into television. He was part of the team behind “Wayward Pines,” a limited Fox mystery series that captivated viewers (if not all critics) this summer with its eccentricity. A second season is in the works.

“Because there are fewer resources in television, I learned how much fat I had on me, how many puffed-up bad habits,” Mr. Shyamalan said. “There was this great feeling of slowly shedding the fat.” (Donald De Line, a “Wayward Pines” executive producer, said Mr. Shyamalan was “positive, high-energy and collaborative” and “not remotely” imperious, as some studio executives maintain.)

On the filmmaking front, Mr. Shyamalan made another sharp turn, veering away from lumbering studio projects like “Airbender” and “After Earth” — movies that, unlike his earlier hits (“Signs,” “The Village,” “Unbreakable”), were not based on his own stories. “The Visit,” which he wrote, produced and directed, will arrive in theaters on Sept. 11. Mr. Shyamalan also spent roughly $5 million of his own money to make it.

“That may have been really stupid,” he said during an interview at the Hotel Bel-Air here, between sips of white wine and bites of tuna tartare. “But it heightened the risk. There was only one way out of this one. I had to make a great movie. It just had to work.”

Featuring one of Mr. Shyamalan’s signature surprise endings, “The Visit” is about two teenagers visiting their oddly behaving grandparents; Nana, played by Deanna Dunagan, scratches the walls at night, and Pop-Pop (Peter McRobbie) has a weird secret in the shed, among other places. The film has been an unexpected hit with audiences in sneak-peek screenings.

“I admit that I was skeptical going in,” said Alexa Hernandez, who saw “The Visit” in July as an attendee at Comic-Con International in San Diego. “But it was one of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen. And it was funny.” After an advance screening of “The Visit” last month, William Bibbiani, a critic at CraveOnline, wrote on Twitter, “M. Night Shyamalan’s best film in a very, very, VERY long time.”

As Mr. Shyamalan has learned the hard way, being an auteur director — projecting what is going on inside your head, cultural currents and ticket sales be darned — is perhaps Hollywood’s trickiest path. It can be done, but it usually leads to fallow periods at the box office. Woody Allen may be the best example. He does what he does, notably working outside the studio system, and the audience can like it or not.

Sitting cross-legged on a patio bench at the hotel, Mr. Shyamalan spoke bluntly about becoming a bit too trapped in his own head. He insisted that he had learned from his mistakes, drawing a comparison to David McCullough’s new biography on the Wright Brothers, which he just happened (ahem) to be carrying with him.

“The hundred failures that existed for them weren’t failures,” he said. “They would crash, and they would say: ‘That was great. I know what went wrong.’ ”

Mr. Shyamalan did not disavow any of his previous films. He said one of his favorites remains “Lady in the Water,” a money loser from 2006, the making of which was infamously chronicled in the book “The Man Who Heard Voices,” by Michael Bamberger. But Mr. Shyamalan conceded that his focus on the audience had taken a back seat to executing a vision.

“I didn’t realize that the sweet spot had shifted,” he said. “Once upon a time, David Fincher and Christopher Nolan were way over to one side, barely hanging on the table. They were just too somber and dark. And now they are dead center. Meanwhile, I was busy being sentimental. ‘Airbender’ was based on a children’s show and rated PG. ‘Lady in the Water’ started as a bedtime story I told my daughters.”

He continued: “For me, ‘E. T.’ was always the holy grail. I was 13 when I saw that movie and was weeping in the theater. There were other 13-year-old boys weeping in the theater. Do you know any 13-year-old boys that would do that today? The era that I grew up in was a warm, sentimental time. That audience doesn’t exist anymore. My daughter is going to go straight from Pixar to Seth Rogen.”

“The Visit” was acquired for release via Universal Pictures by Jason Blum , who has delivered the “Paranormal Activity,” “Purge,” “Insidious” and “Sinister” horror franchises over the past decade. “Night, who I chased for years and years, had the courage to take a break from the Hollywood system,” Mr. Blum said. “That is exactly the type of director we want to bet on.”

Like some of Mr. Shyamalan’s earlier movies, “The Visit” is an intimate family drama tucked inside a horror picture. It uses the well-worn shooting technique (albeit new to him) known as found footage; one of the characters, in this case a teenage girl, catches the action on a camcorder.

Mr. Shyamalan’s script tries to keep the audience guessing in more ways than one. “It wasn’t just about the twist,” he said. “In the moments of dark comedy, I wanted people to be thinking: ‘Am I supposed to be laughing or appalled? I can’t really tell. But I like it.’ ” (Watch for the bizarre scene with a dirty Depend diaper.)

By the end of “The Visit,” the teenage girl — she’s an aspiring filmmaker, explaining her constant recording — has changed from auteur to something a lot more relaxed, perhaps reflecting Mr. Shyamalan’s own recent shift.

“At first, she is striving so hard to make something of art and beauty,” he said, “and finally she says: ‘You know what? Let’s just have some fun.’ ”

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Film Review: ‘The Visit’

M. Night Shyamalan returns to thriller filmmaking in the style of low-budget impresario Jason Blum with mixed results.

By Geoff Berkshire

Geoff Berkshire

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After delivering back-to-back creative and commercial duds in the sci-fi action genre, M. Night Shyamalan retreats to familiar thriller territory with “ The Visit .” As far as happy homecomings go, it beats the one awaiting his characters, though not by much. The story of two teens spending a week with the creepy grandparents they’ve never met unfolds in a mockumentary style that’s new for the filmmaker and old hat for horror auds. Heavier on comic relief (most of it intentional) than genuine scares, this low-budget oddity could score decent opening weekend B.O. and ultimately find a cult following thanks to its freakier twists and turns, but hardly represents a return to form for its one-time Oscar-nominated auteur.

In a way, it’s a relief to see Shyamalan set aside the studio-system excesses of “The Last Airbender” and “After Earth” and get down and dirty with a found-footage-style indie crafted in the spirit of producer Jason Blum’s single location chillers. (Blum actually joined the project after filming wrapped, but it subscribes to his patented “Paranormal Activity” playbook to a T.) Except that the frustrating result winds up on the less haunting end of Shyamalan’s filmography, far south of “The Sixth Sense,” “Signs” and “The Village,” and not even as unsettling as the most effective moments in the hokey “The Happening.”

That’s not to say “The Visit” is necessarily worse than some of those efforts, just a different kind of animal. The simplicity of the premise initially works in the pic’s favor as 15-year-old aspiring documentarian Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her 13-year-old aspiring-rap-star sibling Tyler (Ed Oxenbould of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”) say goodbye to their hard-working single mom (Kathryn Hahn, better than the fleeting role deserves), who ships off on a weeklong cruise with her latest boyfriend. The kids travel by train to rural Pennsylvania to meet Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), the purportedly kindly parents Mom left behind when she took off with her high-school English teacher and caused a permanent rift in the family.

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Becca plans to turn the whole experience into an Oscar-caliber documentary (proving she sets her sights higher than Shyamalan these days) and also an opportunity to exorcise the personal demons both she and Tyler carry around in the wake of their parents’ separation. Unfortunately for the kids, their grandparents appear to be possessed by demons of another kind — although it takes an awfully long time for them to grow legitimately concerned about Nana’s nasty habit of roaming the house at night, vomiting on the floor and scratching at the walls in the nude, and Pop Pop’s almost-as-bizarre behavior, including stuffing a woodshed full of soiled adult diapers, attacking a stranger on the street and regularly dressing in formal wear for a “costume party” that never materializes.

Ominous warnings to not go into the basement (because of “mold,” you see) and stay in their room after 9:30 (Nana’s “bedtime”) fly right over the heads of our otherwise pop-culture-savvy protagonists. Becca even stubbornly refuses to use her omnipresent camera for nighttime reconnaissance, citing concerns over exploitation and “cinematic standards” — one of the lamest excuses yet to justify dumb decisions in a horror narrative — until the weeklong stay is almost up.

Shyamalan has long been criticized for serving up borderline (or downright) silly premises with a straight face and overtly pretentious atmosphere, but he basically abandons that approach here in favor of a looser, more playful dynamic between his fresh-faced leads. At the same time, there’s a surreal campiness to the grandparents’ seemingly inexplicable behavior, fully embraced by Tony winner Dunagan and Scottish character actor McRobbie, that encourages laughter between ho-hum jump scares. Their antics only reach full-blown menacing in the perverse-by-PG-13-standards third act. (The obligatory reveal of what’s really going on works OK, as long as you don’t question it any more than anyone onscreen ever does.)

Even if there’s less chance the audience will burst out in fits of inappropriate chuckles, as was often the case in, say, “The Happening” or “Lady in the Water,” Shyamalan still can’t quite pull off the delicate tonal balance he’s after. Once events ultimately do turn violent — and Nana does more than just scamper around the floor or pop up directly in front of the camera — the setpieces are never as scary or suspenseful as they should be. Even worse are the film’s attempts at character-driven drama, including a couple of awkward soul-baring monologues from the otherwise poised young stars, and a ludicrous epilogue that presumes auds will have somehow formed an emotional bond with characters who actually remain skin-deep throughout. One longs to see what a nervier filmmaker could have done with the concept (and a R rating).

The technical package is deliberately less slick than the Shyamalan norm, although scripting Becca as a budding filmmaker interested in mise en scene provides d.p. Maryse Alberti (whose numerous doc credits include multiple Alex Gibney features) an excuse to capture images with a bit more craft than the average found footage thriller. Shyamalan purposefully decided to forego an original score, but the soundtrack is rarely silent between the chattering of the children, a selection of source music and the eerie sound editing that emphasizes every creaking door and loud crash substituting for well-earned frights.

Reviewed at Arclight Cinemas, Hollywood, Sept. 8, 2015. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 94 MIN.

• Production: A Universal release of a Blinding Edge Pictures and Blumhouse production. Produced by Jason Blum, Marc Bienstock, M. Night Shyamalan. Executive producers, Steven Schneider, Ashwin Rajan.
• Crew: Directed, written by M. Night Shyamalan. Camera (color, HD), Maryse Alberti; editor, Luke Ciarrocchi; music supervisor, Susan Jacobs; production designer, Naaman Marshall; art director, Scott Anderson; set decorator, Christine Wick; costume designer, Amy Westcott; sound (Dolby Digital), David J. Schwartz; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Skip Lievsay; visual effects supervisor, Ruben Rodas; visual effects, Dive VFX; stunt coordinator, Manny Siverio; casting, Douglas Aibel.
• With: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn, Celia Keenan-Bolger.

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The visit ending explained: is the m. night shyamalan movie based on a true story.

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Every Character M. Night Shyamalan Played In His Own Movies

The first "found footage" movie came 38 years before the blair witch project, how many m. night shyamalan movies really have twists.

• "The Visit" is a twist-filled thriller that earned its scares through a plausible story and clever use of found footage genre.
• Despite being eerily plausible, "The Visit" is actually a work of pure fiction and not based on a true story.
• The film explores themes of aging, fear, and generational trauma, while also highlighting the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation.

M. Night Shyamalan's twist-filled thriller The Visit kept viewers guessing all the way up to the shocking conclusion, but is the found footage horror hit based on a true story? Released in 2015, The Visit follows teen siblings Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) as they are sent to spend a week with their estranged grandparents. Naturally, strange things are afoot, and the teens must learn the shocking truth about their relatives. As with all of Shyamalan's horror movies, The Visit built up to a shocking twist that many didn't see coming, but it cleverly incorporated humor in a way that left many perplexed by its tone.

Despite a largely mixed critical reaction (via Rotten Tomatoes ), The Visit was a bona fide financial success (via Box Office Mojo ) and it stands as one of M. Night Shyamalan's highest-grossing movies . Unlike many of Shyamalan's other films which incorporate fantastical elements, The Visit earned its scares by being an entirely plausible story. Visually speaking, Shyamalan used the found footage genre deftly to convey a deeper meaning, and he got genuinely creepy moments from what could have easily been goofy. The compelling mix of plausibility and realism had many wondering whether The Visit was actually based on a true story.

Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has played characters in 11 of his movies, ranging from starring roles to the smallest of cameos.

The Visit Is Not Based On A True Story

Despite being eerily plausible, The Visit was actually a work of pure fiction and had no connection to real life. The script was penned by M. Night Shyamalan himself, with many of the movie's more positive reviews calling it a return to his former glory. Nearly all the writer/director's films have been works of his own imagination and in an interview with Geeks of Doom he said " That is the primal thing of it, that we are scared of getting old. Playing on that is a powerful conceit ". The director would return to that theme a few years later in 2021's Old but to a less effective extent.

The Grandparents Twist Explained

Throughout the film, Becca and Tyler are unsure about the behavior of their Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) and Nana (Deana Dunagan), who have seemingly grown worse as the story progresses. Obviously, something wasn't right about the elderly couple, but the pieces finally clicked when Becca discovered the remains of her real grandparents stashed away in the basement. It is revealed that Pop Pop and Nana are actually escaped patients from the local mental health facility and that they have killed Becca and Tyler's grandparents to assume their lives. It is unclear whether the two escapees would have posed a threat to the kids if they hadn't nosed around.

If there is one thing that the multi-talented Shyamalan is best known for it is his films' abundant use of shocking twists towards the end of his stories. Nearly every M. Night Shyamalan twist has kept audiences guessing, and The Visit was unique because it truly earned its shocking climax. Unlike earlier films which stuck a twist in just to fulfill the obligation, The Visit naturally built towards the twist, and it was a crucial part of the plot, unlike so many throw-away gimmick twists of the past.

Why The Visit Is A Found Footage Movie

Thanks to blockbuster horror hits like Paranormal Activity , the found footage genre started to expand in earnest at the beginning of the 2010s. However, by 2015 and the release of The Visit , the style had largely fallen out of favor. Despite this downturn in popularity, The Visit nevertheless opted for an approach that innovated the found footage tropes by injecting a bit of humor and eschewing the self-serious tone. From a story perspective, The Visit is a found footage movie because it is about Becca's quest to chronicle her family for a documentary, but the choice actually goes deeper.

Unlike other directors who chose found footage as a cheap way to save on the movie's budget, Shyamalan intellectualized the style by making it crucial to the plot. In the same Geeks of Doom interview, the director mentioned " The camera is an extension of those characters...It is manifesting in literal cinematography in this particular movie ". Additionally, Becca's abundant camera usage actually factors into the plot, such as when she shows the footage to her mother, which further integrates it into the fabric of the film.

The Blair Witch Project was key in the history of the found-footage technique, but the very first movie to use this style was released in 1961.

The Significance Of Tyler’s Phobias

Horror movies are all about exploiting common phobias , and The Visit used Tyler's irrational fears as a chance to spook viewers and say something about the themes as well. Tyler is shown to be a bit of a germaphobe, and he also has a fear of freezing to death. While both have rational elements and point back to the omnipresent fear of death from which all phobias stem, Tyler's fears also speak to the idea that the elderly are frightening because they are reminders of death. The slow degradation of the body through aging is a lot like freezing to death, and it is clear that Tyler sees his elderly grandparents as unclean which activates his germ phobia.

The hilariously gruesome scene in which Pop Pop rubs his dirty adult diaper in Tyler's face forces the younger man to confront his fears, and it empowers him later when he finally dispatches the imposter grandpa. It is likely not a coincidence that Tyler kills Pop Pop by slamming his head in the refrigerator, as the ice box is an extension of Tyler's fear of freezing. He literally kills his tormentor with a symbol of the thing that mentally torments him.

How Loretta’s Past Affected The Kids

At the beginning of the film, Becca and Tyler's mom Loretta (Kathryn Hahn) explains that she hasn't spoken to her parents in 15 years because she eloped with one of her high school teachers when she was only a teenager. Instead of facing her problems like an adult, Loretta instead allowed her kids to act as a bridge between the generations, inadvertently sending them to live with two violent escapees from the local mental health ward. Loretta would later reveal that Nana and Pop Pop aren't her parents in one of Shyamalan's most terrifying scares , but she was away on a cruise and couldn't come to their aid.

This forces her kids to mature faster than she ever could, and they go on the offense as they are tasked with escaping from the murderous impostors occupying their grandparent's home. At the end of the film, Loretta explains her last interaction with her parents turned violent, which sheds a bit of light on why she couldn't just face up to the past. In some ways, Loretta's choices as a teenager eventually led to the precarious situation that Becca and Tyler ended up in, and she passed a bit of generational trauma on to them.

Why Becca Puts Her Father In The Documentary

Having survived the harrowing ordeal, Becca's documentary finally begins to take shape at the very end of The Visit . She is given the chance to cut in footage of her estranged father, and though Loretta informs her she doesn't have to, Becca opts to put him in. This choice shows that Becca has matured significantly since the titular visit, and she has come to the realization that forgiveness really is the best path. Loretta could never forgive her parents, and it robbed her of a chance for reconciliation. By putting her dad in the documentary, Becca left that door open for her future self and maybe her own children too.

M. Night Shyamalan is famous for his signature twist endings but when put under a more discerning lens, not all of his films have an authentic twist.

The Real Meaning Of The Visit’s Ending

From a horror perspective, the ending of The Visit is all about the fear of death as personified by the elderly. Nana and Pop Pop are terrifying embodiments of the eventual degradation of the body, though they also fill the role of the conventional horror antagonist. However, from a more thematic side, The Visit is also about forgiveness and reconciliation, as the harboring of deep-seated pain can eventually lead to a bad outcome. Even if it isn't literally an encounter with escaped murderers, it is at least a path of nothing but pain and loss.

• The Visit (2015)

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The Visit streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "The Visit" streaming on Max, Max Amazon Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel, Cinemax Apple TV Channel. It is also possible to buy "The Visit" on AMC on Demand, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft Store as download or rent it on Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft Store, Spectrum On Demand online.

Where does The Visit rank today? The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

Streaming charts last updated: 1:17:52 PM, 05/13/2024

The Visit is 2272 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 737 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Confessions of a Serial Killer but less popular than Swing Kids.

A brother and sister are sent to their grandparents' remote Pennsylvania farm for a week, where they discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing.

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Streaming Charts The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

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The Visit Was Almost Connected To M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable Trilogy

This post contains spoilers for "The Visit."

M. Night Shyamalan's "The Visit" was initially titled "Sundowning," although it could've just as easily been called, "How M. Night Got His Groove Back." The 2015 film saw the "Sixth Sense" and "Signs" director return to his moody thriller roots after helming a pair of critically-panned big-budget misfires in the forms of "The Last Airbender" and "After Earth." By funding the movie on his own, Shyamalan gave himself the creative freedom to make what remains one of the weirdest and wildest creations of his career so far (which is quite the accomplishment, coming from the director of "Lady in the Water").

Framed as an amateur documentary made by 13-year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) and his 15-year-old sister Becca (Olivia DeJonge), "The Visit" follows Tyler and Becca on a week-long trip to meet their estranged grandparents for the first time. Upon accompanying "Nana" (Deanna Dunagan) and "Pop Pop" (Peter McRobbie) to their remote farmhouse, Tyler and Becca are quick to realize there's something ... off about their hosts. Like so much of Shyamalan's work, "The Visit" plays out as a twisted fairy tale from there, as Tyler and Becca slowly uncover the horrifying truth: Nana and Pop Pop are actually a pair of imposters who escaped from the psychiatric hospital where their real grandparents worked and murdered them in order to take their place.

While there's no overlooking  the ageism inherent to the film's premise, "The Visit" benefits from having a dark sense of humor and succeeds in keeping you wondering if there might be a supernatural explanation for Nana and Pop Pop's behavior, right up until the big twist. Ultimately, however, the movie seems to take place in a grounded universe much like our own — although, it turns out, Shyamalan very nearly retconned that years later with 2019's "Glass."

Superheroes exist... and so do evil grandparents

M. Night Shyamalan's Eastrail 177 trilogy, which gets its name from the train line that connects his 2000 film "Unbreakable" with 2017's "Split" and "Glass," resembles "The Visit" in that it starts out taking place in what appears to be the real world. Except, in that case, it turns out the trilogy's universe is home to people with super-human abilities right out of a comic book, like near-physical invulnerability and heightened intelligence. Another thing they share in common? They all take place in or near M. Night's old stomping grounds in Philadelphia, just like the vast majority of his oeuvre.

Has Shyamalan ever toyed with the idea of having all his movies exist in the same version of Philly? He was, after all, the filmmaker who recognized that superhero comic books are the modern-day equivalent of ancient mythology with "Unbreakable," a whole eight years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe took over Hollywood. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter , M. Night admitted he wasn't ahead of the curve when it came to the shared universe trend. Still, that didn't stop him from considering making the events of "The Visit" canon to the Eastrail 177 trilogy:

"If I was smart enough to have thought about it 20-some years ago, I would've done it, but I wasn't smart enough to think about it. There was one tie-in that I almost did. It was in 'Glass' when they all got to the mental institution. I was going to tell a story about 'The Visit' and how two people escaped from that same hospital."

'I chickened out'

"Glass," as M. Night Shyamalan noted, has "Unbreakable" leads David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) being taken to the same psychiatric hospital, Raven Hill Memorial, as "Split" character Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), on the grounds that their "superpowers" are really just delusions brought about by unresolved trauma and mental illness. According to Shyamalan, he came precariously close to including a direct reference to the plot of "The Visit" in his script. "I was going to do it, but I chickened out. So I didn't do it," he confessed.

Directors peppering their films with nods or direct links to their other movies is nothing unusual, mind you. Quentin Tarantino has been doing it his entire career and we don't have time to dive down the rabbit hole that is the Pixar Shared Universe theory. It's mostly just good fun, and it sounds as though Shyamalan wasn't really thinking much deeper than that with his abandoned shout-out to "The Visit" in "Glass." But might it have benefitted the movies from a creative perspective all the same?

My inclination is to say it wouldn't. "The Visit" continues Shyamalan's examination of aging, mortality, and death in his work , which extends to films like "The Sixth Sense" and "Old" but also goes back as far as his first-ever theatrical release, 1998's "Wide Awake." The movie, which was notoriously mangled by producer Harvey Weinstein in post-production, centers on Joshua (Joseph Cross), a 10-year-old boy who's thrown into a spiritual crisis by the death of his grandfather. "Wide Awake" might be a far cry from the sadistic and comedic tone of "The Visit," but so far as thematic parallels go, the pair are arguably more alike than the latter and "Glass." So maybe it's best M. Night "chickened out."

M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit Ending, Explained

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M. Night Shyamalan's twist endings are the hallmark of his career, and his 2015 movie The Visit has one of the most exciting ones. Olivia DeJonge, beloved for playing Ashley in the twisted Christmas horror film Better Watch Out, stars as Becca, a teenage girl who stays with her grandparents alongside her brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould). What should be a fun and peaceful family vacation becomes a perplexing and mysterious nightmare and the teenagers must scramble to discover the dark and haunting truth.

The M. Night Shyamalan horror movie has an exciting ending that shifts the audience's perception of the story, proving once again that the filmmaker is great at providing surprising moments that no one sees coming. The final scenes of The Visit make this one of the most unnerving horror movies of the 2010s.

RELATED: Signs: Joaquin Phoenix’s Character is a Perfect Metaphor for M. Night Shyamalan's Filmmaking

What Happens At The End Of The Visit, And What Is The Twist Ending?

Becca falls into the final girl horror movie trope when she makes an important discovery that is key to the ending of The Visit . When she discovers the dead bodies of her and Ed's grandparents, she also sees uniforms from the hospital where they were employed. This helps her see that "Nana" and "Pop Pop" were patients who ran away, killed their grandparents, and pretended to be them. This is a huge plot twist that was hard to see coming.

The satisfying horror movie ending has the siblings fighting back, but the final scenes are tense and scary, and their survival never feels like a guarantee. Pop Pop locks Becca in her room and hurts Tyler, but Tyler kills Pop Pop and Becca kills Nana. The teenagers are able to get away and talk to the police about what just happened.

The Visit ending works on two levels: a fast-paced, thrilling example of a good horror movie plot twist and also an emotional story about family bonds and problems. Becca and her mom Loretta (Kathryn Hayn) have a tough conversation about how Loretta never talked to her parents after a fight 15 years prior. Loretta wants Becca to stop feeling anger about her own dad's decision to leave the family behind, and the two characters share a sweet moment that helps Becca move forward.

This adds an extra layer to the movie and makes Becca a more fully formed character. It also makes both Becca and Ed feel real since they may be dealing with this out-of-this-world situation, but they are also regular teenagers who feel the pain of a parent who doesn't show them the love that they deserve. While Shyamalan's movie Old is a bad adaptation , The Visit shares that sometimes, it can be difficult to get along with family and it can be tough to move on from past hurts. The movie may have a fun and flashy twist, but it has some deep moments as well that can't be ignored.

How Does This Twist Compare To Others In M. Night Shyamalan Horror Movies?

The Visit ending has one of the best and most unpredictable horror movie plot twists , which makes sense given M. Night Shyamalan's reputation for having shocking moments in most of his films. When comparing the reveal of the identity of "Nana" and "Pop Pop," it's fun to think about the other big reveals in the filmmaker's career. Of course, the standard will always be the twist in the important horror movie The Sixth Sense when it turns out that Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is actually dead and that's one reason for his sweet bond with Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment).

The twist at the end of The Visit might not be quite as stunning as the one in The Sixth Sense , which will always be one of the best horror movie plot twists as it creates such a compelling atmosphere of shock and awe.

However, The Visit still has a fresh and different ending and the final scenes prove the strong character development of the movie. At first, Pop Pop and Nana seem perfectly normal and innocent, and no one would think that grandparents would be evil. And even when Becca and Ed start noticing weird things, it's hard to think that these characters might not be who they are claiming to be. That would mean that they are truly evil and diabolical, and they seem so naive.

The Visit twist ending also works because it's so creepy. Like Pearl (Mia Goth) and Howard (Stephen Ure) in X and Pearl , the patients lying about their identities are definitely unsettling. The movies make sure that the characters are odd and mysterious, but they never seem like they could be killers until audiences finally see them causing havoc.

NEXT: 5 Nonsensical Plot Twists In Horror Movies

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The Visit review – ill-judged shenanigans from M Night Shyamalan

There’s horror and comedy in this messy, shaky-cam nadir, but not the kind Shyamalan was aiming for

T here’s a terrible sense of dread lurking in M Night Shyamalan’s latest. Sadly, it has nothing to do with the boring shaky-cam story about two incandescently irritating teenagers spending some Grimm-lite time with their unhinged grandparents. Instead, it’s the horrible realisation that the film-maker who was lauded for The Sixth Sense , defended for The Village , and just about tolerated for The Happening , may actually have made a movie worse than Lady in the Water . Is it meant to be a horror film? Or a comedy? The publicity calls it “an original thriller” but it is neither of those things. Only “endurance test” adequately describes the ill-judged shenanigans that ensue, as our two young heroes film their estranged Nana and Pop-Pops scratching at the walls, puking on the floor, and mysteriously stockpiling soiled nappies in the woodshed. Can you spot the inevitable plot twist that lurks noisily in the corner? Can you listen to any more of little Ed Oxenbould’s cute comedy rapping without stabbing yourself in the ear? Can you get a refund? Bring back The Last Airbender !

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How “Servant” prepared Ishana Night Shyamalan to make “The Watchers”

“It was the best training ground I could have had,” the young director says of her experience on the Apple TV+ series.

EW's 2024 Summer Preview has dozens of exclusive looks at the most anticipated TV shows, movies, books, and music of entertainment's hottest season. Continue to visit  ew.com  throughout May for more previews of what you'll be watching, reading, and listening to in the months to come.  

Television and film are not synonymous art forms. Writers and directors who find success in one format can’t always translate their skills to the other. But Servant was not like most shows.

Though M. Night Shyamalan executive produced and directed the premiere of the Apple TV+ series about a Philadelphia family’s strange response to the death of their infant child, he was always insistent that every other director have creative freedom with their episodes. That made it an ideal learning experience for young filmmakers like Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau and his own daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan, whose feature debut The Watchers hits theaters this summer. 

“It was the best training ground I could have had,” Shyamalan tells Entertainment Weekly . “With those 30-minute episodes, I got to exercise both my structural dialogue skills in writing and then also learned how to do as much visual storytelling, and curation of vibe and tone, as possible with directing. The TV world moves so fast that you don't really have time to think about it. You are continuing to learn and grow at this very rapid rate. So that was wonderful. It was like doing short film after short film in a very isolated period of time.”

As the daughter of an acclaimed filmmaker, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and now a seasoned writer/director of short films, Shyamalan has long harbored dreams of directing her own feature. And the timing just happened to work out perfectly, when a producer brought her Irish author A.M. Shine’s novel The Watchers just as Servant was wrapping up. 

“I knew by the time I finished the book that it captured exactly the tone that I wanted to explore and play in,” Shyamalan says. “It had all these rich visuals and just felt like an endless well of inspiration. So it was one of those things that feels like divine timing — it came at the exact moment when I was seeking it. It’s like what they say about trying on a wedding dress: You know it when you feel it. I just knew when I read it that this was meant to be.”

The first trailer for The Watchers establishes an eerie sense of mystery. Dakota Fanning stars as Mina, a 28-year-old artist who gets stranded in an Irish forest. Though she finds shelter, she and the other lost people taking refuge in an isolated building find themselves observed by unseen creatures. The trailer has minimal dialogue, opting instead for creepy visuals like a winged skeleton or Fanning’s Mina tapping on a mirror that she suspects is a window on the other side. 

“For me, it's always about visual elements first. The thing I love more than anything else in the film process is playing with colors and textures,” Shyamalan says. “So when I read the book, it felt like it had all these opportunities. He described environments in a very emotional, sensory way, and I had very distinctive visuals that came to mind as I was reading it. Those visuals are exactly what exists in the movie. It just feels like magic when you get to do that.”

As it happens, both Shyamalan and her father have new films coming out this summer; his Trap stars Josh Hartnett as a serial killer who realizes he’s being targeted by police while at a concert with his daughter. Shyamalan says the timing is coincidental but ended up coming together in a cute way. 

“I filmed last summer, and then literally the day I locked my film, he started his prep,” she says. “So it’s kind of been madness. Now we're editing side by side. We have two editing rooms on either side of the theater, and it's just back and forth — we’re in each other's editing rooms and talking about the movies. It’s this really cool flow.”

The Watchers hits theaters on June 7. 

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• M. Night Shyamalan's daughter is now directing her own mind-bending movies like The Watchers
• Why M. Night Shyamalan brought in his daughter Ishana to direct  Servant  episodes
• Why  Servant  had to end with that epic confrontation between Dorothy and Leanne

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly .

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A young artist gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest in western Ireland, where, after finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers, stalked by mysterious creatur... Read all A young artist gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest in western Ireland, where, after finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers, stalked by mysterious creatures each night. A young artist gets stranded in an extensive, immaculate forest in western Ireland, where, after finding shelter, she becomes trapped alongside three strangers, stalked by mysterious creatures each night.

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There’s An Easter Egg In The Trailer For M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap That Suggests He’s Getting More Twist-y Than Normal

Very, very sneaky, Mr. Shyamalan.

It's a big year for the Shyamalan household, as the man and his family who brought us The Sixth Sense and Signs have two upcoming horror movies on the 2024 movie schedule . In the trailer for M. Night’s newest movie , the serial killer thriller Trap , there is an easter egg that suggests the master of the twist is getting even more twisty-y than usual, and it involves his daughter's directorial debut, The Watchers.

When it comes to directors who have mastered the art of the plot twist, M. Night Shyamalan sits comfortably at the top of the list. The trailer for his latest project looks like he's not only setting us up for another mind-bending adventure with what I believe is a secret sequel but also intriguingly linking it to his daughter's first movie, the upcoming book-to-screen adaptation of author A.M. Shine’s horror adventure novel . At precisely 1:09 into the trailer, if you're quick enough to pause and zoom in on the background, you'll spot a subtle yet unmistakable nod to The Watchers .

Did you catch that? Tucked away just behind the police convoy, there's a fleeting glimpse of a poster for Ishana Night Shyamalan’s new flick . This quick nod could be more than just a father proudly highlighting his daughter's work; it might hint at a shared universe. Is that what the trailer hints at with the line: "Get Ready For a New Experience"? This isn't just passing the torch—it's potentially weaving together a tapestry of Shyamalanian tales... a Shyamalaniverse, if you will. Or perhaps, the Night’s Nexus of Movies. No, that’s not quite right. How about the Shyamalandscape of Cinema?!

Of course, this is all speculation, and I might be way off base. Especially since Ishana has made it clear she intends to carve out a path distinct from her father's . Shared father-daughter universe or not, one thing is for sure: Trap is very much a family production. M. Night's other daughter, the real-life pop singer Saleka Shyamalan, is gearing up for a significant role in the thriller. She plays the fictional singer Lady Raven, whose concert becomes the unlikely setting where the father (and serial killer), played by Josh Hartnett , finds himself inescapably caught.

As for The Watchers , the film centers around a young artist, Mina, played by Dakota Fanning . She finds herself stranded in a vast, untamed forest where every car, including hers, mysteriously breaks down at the tree line. Pushed into the forest's depths by desperate cries for help, she stumbles upon a grim concrete bunker just as darkness falls. She becomes the newest member of a group of people who believe mysterious forces are observing them. This theme resonates deeply with Shyamalan's love for suspense and the supernatural. Including this poster in Trap’ s background scenery is a clever Easter egg that does double duty, promoting his daughter’s film and enriching the lore of his own.

As the two films approach their releases, the question remains: How deep does the rabbit hole go in Shyamalan’s expanding universe? The Watchers hits theaters first on June 7, with Trap following on August 9.

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Ryan graduated from Missouri State University with a BA in English/Creative Writing. An expert in all things horror, Ryan enjoys covering a wide variety of topics. He's also a lifelong comic book fan and an avid watcher of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. 

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Clint Eastwood & Paul Newman Turned Down Starring in This M. Night Shyamalan Film

This thriller would have been a very different film had casting choices worked out the first time.

The Big Picture

• Signs ' success was largely due to a strong cast, including Mel Gibson as Graham Hess, who excelled in a role that required him to grapple with faith and protect his family.
• M. Night Shyamalan originally had Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman in mind for the role of Graham Hess, but both actors were either unavailable or uninterested.
• The film went through changes in its casting and storyline, ultimately resulting in a more intimate portrayal of the characters and a stronger emphasis on faith as a central theme.

Following the one-two punch of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable , M. Night Shyamalan 's Signs had the unenviable goal of living up to the legacy that the young filmmaker was creating for himself in Hollywood, and it largely succeeded in doing so (his next film, The Village , however, did not ). The film, a modern classic in its own right, is part science fiction nightmare, part horror, part family drama, and part exploration of faith. It's a bold mix that works in the film's favor, especially if one subscribes to the theory that the aliens are, in fact, demons (which corrects the "water" plot hole). The cast is perhaps the film's strongest asset. Both Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin are excellent as the Hess children, bringing a realism to their characters that, thankfully, didn't border on precociousness. Joaquin Phoenix infuses his Merrill Hess with a believable brotherly connection. The film, though, lives and dies with Mel Gibson , and he excels as Graham Hess, a role that calls on him to be a man struggling with his faith, trying to rationalize what's happening, and protecting his family at all costs. And he wasn't even Shyamalan's first, or second choice — those were Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman .

A widowed former reverend living with his children and brother on a Pennsylvania farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields, which suggests something more frightening to come.

Mel Gibson Wasn't M. Night Shyamalan's First Choice for Graham Hess

For the role of Graham Hess, M. Night Shyamalan had some specific criteria. The character was written as being older, which dictated the age of the actor Shyamalan was looking for. He was also supposedly looking for someone with "haunted eyes." Of course, there were only a handful of actors at the time that would fit the bill, and one of the first actors Shyamalan approached was one of the brightest stars from that pool: Clint Eastwood. Eastwood's filmography is filled with characters that have those haunted eyes: think Frank Horrigan from In the Line of Fire , Mitchell Gant from Firefox , or William Munny in Unforgiven , where he utilized that look most effectively. Clint Eastwood, at the time, had moved away from acting , but if he had an interest in Signs or not was irrelevant, as the Oscar-winning actor had scheduling conflicts that would have kept him from accepting the role.

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Before he finally turned to Mel Gibson, Shyamalan also turned to the esteemed Paul Newman for the role of Graham Hess. Newman had no scheduling conflicts but simply had no interest in the role . Looking at the film now, it's difficult to imagine Graham Hess as an older character. It would have changed the dynamic between the characters for sure, with Hess the elderly patriarch of a larger family, not the father figure. Eastwood and Newman each have their own strengths as actors, which would have driven the narrative in differing ways. Eastwood, likely, would have been a more authoritative, loner figure, while Newman would presumably be a more open, familial figure. Nevertheless, with his first two choices either unavailable (Eastwood) or uninterested (Newman), Shyamalan revised the character to be about 20 years younger . Finally, he settled on Mel Gibson, who had the haunted eyes that he had been looking for all along. The rest, as they say, is history.

'Signs' Had Other Casting Issues

In an interview recounted on Horrornews.net , Shyamalan talks about the initial plans for the film. It would have been "a big family thing with so many characters, a big Thanksgiving and then the end of the world comes," which would make sense with an Eastwood or Newman as its patriarch. But it didn't feel right, so he brought the character count down from seven to five. The fifth character was going to be a nanny/teacher who lived in the house. The name attached to that role would have made for another fascinating dynamic: Toni Collette . When Shyamalan lost her to another role, the fifth character was dropped, leaving the Hess family at four.

Then, just before production on Signs was to begin, Shyamalan was forced to find a new Merrill Hess . Actor Mark Ruffalo had been cast and was prepared to begin until a dream led him to believe he had a brain tumor. The scary thing is, he did. A CAT scan and an MRI revealed a mass the size of a golf ball behind Mark Ruffalo's left ear , and he was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma, a non-cancerous, benign brain tumor that had caused a 7% hearing loss in that ear. It also affected his facial nerve, and after surgery to remove the tumor, his face was paralyzed for days, and it took almost a year for Ruffalo to recover. The role was then given to Joaquin Phoenix , which arguably turned out for the best as he and Gibson had an easy chemistry, with performances that complemented one another. Not that Ruffalo wouldn't have, of course, but Phoenix seems more believable as being the younger brother of Gibson.

Signs could have been a significantly different beast than what finally appeared on cinema screens, with each potential casting choice either adding an element that benefitted the film, or an element that negatively impacted it. The initial plan of a bigger family in the film wouldn't have allowed for the viewer to intimately know each character, and it's that intimacy with the characters that makes the film work. As good as Signs is, it's hard to argue that there aren't convenient moments that stretch the film's believability: Morgan's asthma, preventing him from inhaling the alien/demon toxic gas. Bo's habit of leaving glasses of water all around the home. Caroline ( Cherry Jones ), Graham's wife's dying words, "swing away," turn out to be instructions on how to stop the creature . But because of the cast that Shyamalan gathered and their commitments to their roles, even if they weren't his first choice, these narrative conveniences — which would have sunk a film with a lesser cast — become believable plot points that speak to the overarching theme of Signs : faith. But that's an article for another time.

Signs is available to rent or buy on Prime Video in the U.S.

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