Renowned for his shocking plot twists, M. Night Shyamalan is one of the most beloved filmmakers in the world. Since bursting onto the scene with The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan has wowed audiences with such instant classics as Unbreakable and Signs. He still has his fair share of movies that haven’t been so well-received, like The Happening and Lady in the Water, but a lot of his movies have been acclaimed by critics, like his James McAvoy-starring psychological thriller Split.
Out of all of Shyamalan’s movies, his 2015 sleeper hit The Visit is often overlooked. But it marked a radical departure from Shyamalan’s usual directing style and hits the tricky-to-pull-off sweet spot between horror and comedy.
After the critical and financial disappointment of both The Last Airbender and After Earth, Shyamalan abandoned big-budget studio fare and went back to basics with The Visit. While his last movie had been a post-apocalyptic action-thriller starring Will Smith and a bunch of CGI, The Visit was a low-budget found-footage horror movie with no major stars in leading roles. Suffice to say, it was a drastic change of pace for the director.
It’s not uncommon for directors to return to their roots with a couple of small-scale entries in the genre that made them famous after a couple of disappointing blockbusters. Guy Ritchie returned to making quirky ensemble crime comedies after The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and King Arthur both flopped at the box office. Similarly, after his own attempts to launch a lucrative franchise failed, Shyamalan went back to making intimate, character-focused horror movies.
The Visit begins with two young siblings, played by Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould, being sent to stay with their estranged grandparents, played by Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie. During the kids’ stay, the grandparents exhibit increasingly alarming behavior. Nana runs around the house scratching the walls at night and Pop Pop spends a good chunk of each day with a shotgun in his mouth. As the kids try to figure out why their grandma keeps chasing them around the crawlspace and trying to put them in the oven, they uncover some shocking truths.
Shyamalan imbued the movie with a dark sense of humor, reminiscent of Sam Raimi movies like The Evil Dead and Drag Me to Hell. Horror and comedy are strange bedfellows, because one is designed to terrify and unnerve the audience and the other is designed to relieve and amuse them. However, working in tandem, these two polar opposite genres can complement each other. The Visit might not quite rank alongside the greatest horror comedies ever made – An American Werewolf in London, Scream, Shaun of the Dead, etc. – but it does find a nice tonal balance between a genuine sense of terror and refreshing comic relief.
While Shyamalan cast mostly unknown actors in the movie to maintain the found-footage illusion, there is one familiar face in the form of WandaVision’s breakout star Kathryn Hahn, who gives a memorable supporting turn as the kids’ mother. DeJonge and Oxenbould might not be huge stars (yet), but they’re perfect for their roles and share great chemistry as siblings that goes a long way toward selling the terrifying conflict of the movie.
Shyamalan wrings some truly unique scares out of the fact that the movie’s monsters are seemingly a sweet elderly couple who want to spend time with their grandkids. No other horror movie has a scene in which two children are forced against their will to play a game of Yahtzee. Dunagan and McRobbie’s masterful performances walk a fine line between warm and creepy.
As is usually the case with a Shyamalan movie – especially a Shyamalan horror movie – The Visit has a handful of harrowing plot twists. There are enough hints for the audience to start to put the pieces together themselves, but the biggest revelations still pack a punch. Without spoiling anything, the final act of the movie masterfully pays off the frightening build-up of the first and second acts, which not a lot of horror movies manage to pull off.
After the big twist reveal, Shyamalan doesn’t rush to the end of the movie. He takes some time to bask in the terror of the twist with a haunting edge-of-your-seat finale. Like all the best horror movies, The Visit traps its protagonists in a seemingly inescapable situation and then forces the audience to watch them struggle through it. In keeping with The Visit being primarily a comedy, Shyamalan provides a cushion of laughs between this twisted finale and the movie’s end credits.
Following a string of disappointing duds, The Visit marked a much-needed return to form for Shyamalan. Fans who miss the director’s more acclaimed earlier works, like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, or have enjoyed his recent low-budget hits, like Split and Glass, should definitely check out The Visit.