the visit 2015 synopsis

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 .

• Deanna Dunagan as Nana
• Olivia DeJonge as Rebecca Jamison
• Ed Oxenbould as Tyler Jamison
• Kathryn Hahn as Mother
• Peter McRobbie as Pop-Pop
• Benjamin Kanes as Dad
• Luke Franco Ciarrocch
• M. Night Shyamalan

Cinematography

• Maryse Alberti

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What to Know

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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The Visit (2015)

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Description by Wikipedia

The Visit is a 2015 American found footage horror film written, co-produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, and Kathryn Hahn. The film centers around two young siblings, teenage girl Becca (DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (Oxenbould), who go to stay with their estranged grandparents. During their stay, the siblings notice their grandparents behaving bizarrely and they set out to find the truth behind the strange circumstances at the farmstead.

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Home » Movies » Movie Reviews

The Visit (2015) Review

We review the 2015 movie The Visit, which does not contain any significant spoilers. 

M. Night Shyamalan is back – and he really snuck this one in under the radar. The Visit adopts the found footage form of storytelling – a change from Shyamalan’s usual style, though bearing obvious marks of his directorial and writing styles throughout nonetheless – and introduces this horror – akin to the likes of  The Blair Witch Project and  Paranormal Activity – with a simple premise: a young brother and sister visit their somewhat estranged grandparents as a holiday away, while their parents go on a cruise or something more enjoyable.

The Visit Review and Plot Summary

Before meeting their grandparents for the first time in their lives, Becca, aged 15, and Tyler, 13, are told by their divorced mother, Loretta, that she has not spoken to them for 15 years due to their strong disapproval of her marriage with her high school teacher. Becca and Tyler decide to take a camcorder along with them to make a documentary of their visit. Always a fun idea.

At first, the grandparents generally seem like any other adorable old couple, aside from some suspiciously strange requests – they’re adamantly told they must be in bed by 21:30, and that they also mustn’t go into the basement due to some toxic mould. And, of course, with 21:30 being the prime time at which hunger strikes (this isn’t sarcasm), Becca heads to the kitchen for a snack at which point she is rudely interrupted by the witnessing of her grandma projectile vomiting.

Grandpa – or Pop Pop – tells the kids that grandma – referred to as Nana – merely has a case of the flu, before reminding them of the house rules. The days progress and the kids pick up on instances of noticeably bizarre behaviour being exhibited by their grandparents, including Tyler entering Pop’s shed and happening upon a big pile of shit (akin to  The Happening , coincidentally). Becca decides to question Nana about Loretta leaving home to which Nana being screaming and shaking.

The cute couple are later confronted by a woman they met through some prior counselling sessions. The three of them are seen going into the backyard by the kids, though they never see the woman leaving. Some clues lead the kids to believe their grandparents killed the woman by hanging, at which point they decide to film their grandparents’ goings-on post-curfew, by recording them with the camera.

They decide to film the grandparents, and Nana discovers the camera. Nana grabs a kitchen knife and heads for Becca and Tyler’s shared bedroom, before trying to unsuccessfully break her way in. Reviewing the footage, the kids see the knife and call Loretta explaining the situation and demanding they be picked up. And here’s where the classic Shyamalan twist comes in – upon being shown images of their grandparents, Loretta, horrified, reveals that the people in said images aren’t her parents.

Suitably shitting themselves, Becca and Tyler try to escape but are forcefully kept in by the increasingly creepy grandparents who they now know to be complete strangers. Becca sneaks into the basement and finds her real grandparents, both dead, with their work uniforms from their jobs at a mental hospital, thus revealing the strangers are escaped patients who broke into the house, murdered their grandparents and assumed their identities ( I mean, seriously – identity theft is not a joke, guys ).

Despite it already being a pretty messed up situation, it soon turns into a shit-uation, when Pop tries to physically and mentally torment Tyler by rubbing a diaper full of shit in his face, after having locked Becca in a room with Nana who spends the duration trying to eat Becca. Tyler decides he’s put up with enough shit and, in a fit of pure rage, kills Pops with the help of the refrigerator door. Becca and Tyler escape, and are greeted by Loretta and the police. The film finishes with a heartfelt family-oriented moral, in which Loretta tells Becca not to hold onto her anger surrounding her father’s abandonment of them.

Is the movie The Visit good?

Despite the found footage style of filming being one of my least favourite in the genre of horror (which I’m already a fairly avid hater of), the film just works; it delves straight into the story, and presents us with two admirable characters with situations we can all relate to – having to spend unwanted time with extended families.

Tyler in particular, however, is a highlight of the film. Ed Oxenbould does a wonderful job of maintaining a genuinely comical and endearing aspect to his character alongside the effectively established mysterious and eerie atmosphere created once the film kicks in. With a range of running gags throughout the film – including replacing curse words during unfortunate events with the names of famous female pop stars, and some genuinely good rapping skills – the film provides a uniquely enjoyable form of side comedy combined with a primary dose of peril.

If there’s anything to complain about in regards to this film, it’s the usual inaccurate trope of people with mental illnesses being dangerous and ridiculous – something we all know Shyamalan has done on more than one occasion, though it’s a problem in the film industry and media in general.

Despite the clearly present issue surrounding mental health in films,  The Visit is a film I thoroughly enjoyed. Many claimed this to be Shyamalan’s comeback after the abomination that was  After Earth – and I’d agree. Shyamalan manages to use a form of presentation in a horror film which has been equipped time and time again, yet manages to keep it fresh, full of suspense and, of course, inclusive of a healthy dose of twists to ensure it all pays off. And it does.

What did you think of the 2015 movie The Visit? Comment below.

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The Ending Of The Visit Explained

Contains spoilers for  The Visit

M. Night Shyamalan is notorious for using dramatic twists towards the endings of his films, some of which are pulled off perfectly and add an extra layer of depth to a sprawling story (hello, Split ). Some of the director's other offerings simply keep the audience on their toes rather than having any extra subtext or hidden meaning. Shyamalan's 2015 found-footage horror-comedy  The Visit , which he wrote and directed, definitely fits in the latter category, aiming for style over substance.

The Visit follows 15-year-old Becca Jamison (Olivia DeJonge) and her 13-year-old brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) when they spend the week with their mother's estranged parents, who live in another town. Loretta (played by WandaVision 's Kathryn Hahn ) never explained to her children why she separated herself away from her parents, but clearly hopes the weekend could help bring the family back together.

Although The Visit occasionally toys with themes of abandonment and fear of the unknown, it wasn't particularly well-received by critics on its initial release, as many struggled with its bizarre comedic tone in the found-footage style. So, after Tyler and his camera record a number of disturbing occurrences like Nana (Deanna Dunagan) projectile-vomiting in the middle of the night and discovering "Pop Pop"'s (Peter McRobbie) mountain of used diapers, it soon becomes clear that something isn't right with the grandparents.

Here's the ending of  The Visit  explained.

The Visit's twist plays on expectations

Because Shyamalan sets up the idea of the separation between Loretta and her parents very early on — and doesn't show their faces before Becca and Tyler meet them — the film automatically creates a false sense of security. Even more so since the found-footage style restricts the use of typical exposition methods like flashbacks or other scenes which would indicate that Nana and Pop Pop aren't who they say they are. Audiences have no reason to expect that they're actually two escapees from a local psychiatric facility.

The pieces all come together once Becca discovers her  real grandparents' corpses in the basement, along with some uniforms from the psychiatric hospital. It confirms "Nana" and "Pop-Pop" escaped from the institution and murdered the Jamisons because they were a similar age, making it easy to hide their whereabouts from the authorities. And they would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.)

However, after a video call from Loretta reveals that the pair aren't her parents, the children are forced to keep up appearances — but the unhinged duo start to taunt the siblings. Tyler in particular is forced to face his fear of germs as "Pop Pop" wipes dirty diapers in his face. The germophobia is something Shyamalan threads through Tyler's character throughout The Visit,  and the encounter with "Pop Pop" is a basic attempt of showing he's gone through some kind of trial-by-fire to get over his fears.

But the Jamison kids don't take things lying down: They fight back in vicious fashion — a subversion of yet another expectation that young teens might would wait for adults or law enforcement officers to arrive before doing away with their tormentors.

Its real message is about reconciliation

By the time Becca stabs "Nana" to death and Tyler has repeatedly slammed "Pop-Pop"'s head with the refrigerator door, their mother and the police do arrive to pick up the pieces. In a last-ditch attempt at adding an emotional undertone, Shyamalan reveals Loretta left home after a huge argument with her parents. She hit her mother, and her father hit her in return. But Loretta explains that reconciliation was always on the table if she had stopped being so stubborn and just reached out. One could take a domino-effect perspective and even say that Loretta's stubbornness about not reconnecting and her sustained distance from her parents put them in exactly the vulnerable position they needed to be for "Nana" and "Pop-Pop" to murder them. 

Loretta's confession actually mirrors something "Pop-Pop" told Tyler (before his run-in with the refrigerator door): that he and "Nana" wanted to spend one week as a normal family before dying. They should've thought about that before murdering a pair of innocent grandparents, but here we are. 

So, is The Visit  trying to say that if we don't keep our families together, they'll be replaced by imposters and terrify our children? Well, probably not. The Visit tries to deliver a message about breaking away from old habits, working through your fears, and stop being so stubborn over arguments that don't have any consequences in the long-run. Whether it actually sticks the landing on all of those points is still up for debate.

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Time Out says

The only way is up for nosediving onetime golden boy M Night Shyamalan following the disastrous hat-trick of ‘The Happening’, ‘The Last Airbender’ and ‘After Earth’ – a run of shockers that make Ed Wood look like Scorsese. And on the surface, ‘The Visit’ looks like a welcome return to the ‘The Sixth Sense’ writer-director’s early successes, with its rural Pennsylvania setting, hairpin plot and forgettable title. It’s constructed as a homemade documentary by 15-year-old movie geek Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her wannabe-rap-star little brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), whose trip to visit their estranged grandparents (Deanna Duggan and Peter McRobbie) gradually flips from a fun family getaway to a terrifying endurance test when it turns out the old folks have some unsavoury nocturnal habits.

Shyamalan proves he’s not lost his knack for a short, sharp shock – there’s a hide-and-seek scene that’ll leave you whimpering – and the inevitable twist is a doozy. But there are two major problems here, and they’re both blonde, blue-eyed and unbearable: if Becca’s cheery habit of spouting great chunks of moviemaking lore isn’t irksome enough, Tyler’s penchant for breaking into squeaky improvised rhyme might actually induce panic attacks. The result is a bizarre, conflicted mess, horrifying when it’s trying to be funny, oddly appealing when it turns the screws. Still, if you’ve ever wanted to hear a lisping 12-year-old rap about how traumatic it is to have shit rubbed in your face by a elderly relative, step right up.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 11 September 2015
• Duration: 94 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: M. Night Shyamalan
• Screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan
• Kathryn Hahn
• Ed Oxenbould
• Benjamin Kanes
• Deanna Dunagan
• Olivia DeJonge
• Peter McRobbie

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Writer/director/producer M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable) and producer Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, The Purge and Insidious series) welcome you to Universal Pictures’ The Visit. Shyamalan returns to his roots with the terrifying story of a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania farm for a weeklong trip. Once the children discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home are growing smaller every day.

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Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

No one loves you like your grandparents.

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.

Olivia DeJonge Ed Oxenbould Deanna Dunagan Peter McRobbie Kathryn Hahn Celia Keenan-Bolger Samuel Stricklen Patch Darragh Jorge Cordova Steve Annan Benjamin Kanes Ocean James Seamus Moroney Dave Jia Sajida De Leon John Buscemi Richard Barlow Shelby Lackman

Director Director

M. Night Shyamalan

Producers Producers

M. Night Shyamalan Jason Blum

Writer Writer

Casting casting.

Douglas Aibel

Editor Editor

Luke Ciarrocchi

Cinematography Cinematography

Maryse Alberti

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Sebastian Mazzola Brian Moon

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Steven Schneider Ashwin Rajan

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Peter Nolan

Production Design Production Design

Naaman Marshall

Art Direction Art Direction

Scott G. Anderson

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Christine Wick

Special Effects Special Effects

Dane Wilson

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Jennifer Wessner Bob Lowery

Stunts Stunts

Laurie Singer Drew Leary

Sound Sound

Skip Lievsay

Costume Design Costume Design

Amy Westcott

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Teresa Morgan

Blumhouse Productions Blinding Edge Pictures Universal Pictures dentsu

Releases by Date

10 sep 2015, 11 sep 2015, 17 sep 2015, 24 sep 2015, 25 sep 2015, 07 oct 2015, 08 oct 2015, 15 oct 2015, 22 oct 2015, 23 oct 2015, 19 nov 2015, 26 nov 2015, 11 dec 2015, 09 feb 2016, 16 aug 2022, 01 feb 2016, 23 feb 2016, 16 mar 2016, releases by country.

• Theatrical M
• Theatrical 14A
• Physical 15
• Theatrical 12
• Digital VOD
• Physical 12 DVD & Blu-Ray
• Digital 12 Netflix
• Theatrical 15A
• Theatrical N-13

Netherlands

• Theatrical 16
• Physical 16 DVD, Blu ray
• Theatrical M/16

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• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical 16 ICAA 51215
• Theatrical 15+
• Theatrical PG-13

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Popular reviews

Review by sexualjumanji ★★★★½ 8

Just called my grandparents and told them to fuck off forever.

Review by 𝚮𝖆𝖗𝖑𝖊𝖖𝖚𝖎𝖓𝖆𝖉𝖊 ❤️‍🔥 ★★★ 38

>5 minutes in >the kid starts rapping >I add this to my films that made me happy I’m childless list >9 minutes in >it happens again >I google "how to make sure you don't get pregnant" >89 minutes in >IT RAPS ONCE MORE >I decide sex is never worth the risk

📝 Shyamalan: ranked

Review by maria ★★ 18

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

bold of m. night shyamalan to include a scene where a diaper full of shit is being shoved into someone's face to symbolize how much shit he's gonna be shoving into our faces for the next 94 minutes

Review by cait ★★★ 7

if m. night wanted me to sympathise with the kids why did he make one of them a freestyle rapper. how am i supposed to find any sympathy towards that. little freak deserved everything that happened

Review by gab🦕 ★★★★ 9

you cannot convince me that this isn’t a comedy

Review by ˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ ★★★ 1

WHAT IN THE TAYLOR SWIFT WAS THAT

Review by adambolt ★★½

I'm gonna act like this whenever my grandkids stay over just to fuck with them

Review by WraithApe ★★★ 23

Yo.. yo.. yo..

M. Night Shyamalan comin at ya with an alarmin yarn about Pop Pop and Nana livin the good life in homedown manor

Enter Becca and her litle bro far from a pro wannabe rapper T. Diamond Stylus Stubbin his toe with an 'Oh Mylie Cyrus!' droppin the mic with a 'HO'

Got a ringside seat M. Night finds footage thru documentary conceit Set-up's begun take it back to film school, 101 Establishing shot, set-up again zoom lens, cross cut, mise-en-scène

Goin meta with Becca but Nana's still gonna get her Makin night moves outside the door Sundown fright on a lower floor red eyes fed by satanic delight

Pop's runnin shit like dystentry Pilin up diapers like…

Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 4

"Old people sometimes have troubles with their body" "People leave. They find something better."

Doesn't quite have the scope of his early work but probably the most vital found footage filmmaking has felt in... ever? Shyamalan's visual grace & intelligence blends really well with the cheap, modern ageism Hansel & Gretal exploitation movie he's making here and he very effectively uses the immediacy inherent to the form to sneak real sudden thrills into some of his usual themes of familial breakdown/estrangement and masking/physically overcoming emotional trauma. There are a number of very creepily conceived shocks but weirdly enough the film is much more emotionally clear & cathartic than it is scary by the end. It totally works though so I have trouble seeing this as a bad thing.

Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 16

The works of M. Night Shyamalan, no matter the quality, are each on a quest of searching mystery and eventual discovery. All of his films are bursting with uneasy traps and elusive secrets, and it is these traits in which Shyamalan's fame was built upon. To say he had a dry spell is a massive understatement, but as soon as The Visit flares up with its opening shot, a startling vision immediately makes its presence known.

I felt like I was home again.

The Visit , while advertised as a silly and creepy chiller, is more of an insane boiling pot of family turmoil and batshit antics. It's a bewildering mix of humor, horror, and heart-wrenching dramatic impact, and each…

Review by Neil Bahadur ★★½ 11

Unbelievable. Probably my 2nd favourite Shyamalan...one of the great films where everything you thought was right turns out to be wrong, and certainly the scariest film Shyamalan has made. There is explosive digital formalism, cameras seem to be attached to bodies and in moments of intense, quick movement the frame is obscured by flinging hair and occasional ruptures in the image of a human face; abstractions which could be only captured by the size of consumer grade cameras. In a way, it's inspiring because of that.

But much of this movie's terror comes from the opposite of Shyamalan's earlier tendencies, that we should believe in ghosts and demons ala Dreyer or Tourneur. Rather, people are terrifying, and even worse, family.…

Review by Mario 🟠🟢🔵 ★★★½ 6

Old people scare me.

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• Horror films
• American fantasy films
• Films directed by M. Night Shyamalan
• Found Footage films
• 2010s films
• Rated PG-13

The Visit is a 2015 American " found footage " style horror-fantasy written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan , and produced by Shyamalan, Jason Blum, Marc Bienstock, Steven Schneider, and Ashwin Rajan. The movie revolves around two siblings who visit their distant grandparents. As their visit progresses, they observe increasingly odd behavior from their grandparents and embark on a quest to uncover the reality of the peculiar situation at the homestead.

The film stars Kathryn Hahn, Ed Oxenbould, Peter McRobbie, and Benjamin Kanes. It was released vis Universal Pictures on September 11, 2015.

• 3.1 Trailers
• 3.2 Reviews
• 5 References

Two siblings from Philadelphia, Becca and Tyler, are gearing up for a five-day stay with their grandparents while their divorced mother, Loretta, embarks on a cruise with her new partner. Loretta discloses that she hasn't communicated with her parents for 15 years due to her marriage to her high-school teacher, which her parents opposed. The teenagers, who have never met their grandparents, intend to document their visit on video as a documentary project.

Becca and Tyler are greeted by their grandparents, known as "Nana" and "Pop Pop," at a train station. Upon arrival at the secluded farmhouse, they are warned to avoid the basement due to mold and to adhere to a 9:30 PM bedtime, staying in their room thereafter. Initially, the grandparents appear friendly, but soon their actions become increasingly strange. One night, Becca, breaking curfew, witnesses Nana violently vomiting. By day, Nana aggressively pursues the children during hide-and-seek. Tyler later discovers a stash of dirty diapers in the shed. In town, Pop Pop confronts a man he suspects of following them. Both grandparents downplay each other's odd behavior when questioned. As their conduct grows more erratic, Becca and Tyler's documentary project shifts into a quest to unravel mysteries and gather proof.

A woman, whom Nana and Pop Pop had assisted in counseling, delivers a blueberry cobbler as a token of gratitude. However, after an altercation, she is not observed departing. Amidst the unfolding oddities, Tyler opts to covertly record the living room overnight. Nevertheless, Nana uncovers the camera and endeavors, albeit futilely, to penetrate the children's secured bedroom wielding a knife.

Upon watching the footage of Nana with the knife, Becca and Tyler video call Loretta and beg her to collect them. They use the laptop camera to show Loretta the odd behavior of her parents, who are outside the house. Upon seeing them, Loretta, distressed, identifies that the couple her children have been staying with are not her parents. Realizing they have been staying with strangers, the teenagers try to escape the house and discover the visitor who went missing hanging from a tree. The "grandparents" find the children and force them to play Yahtzee . Later, Becca sneaks into the basement and finds the decomposed corpses of their real grandparents, along with uniforms from the psychiatric hospital at which they worked, revealing that their "grandparents" are actually escaped patients. Pop Pop grabs Becca and imprisons her in his bedroom with Nana, who tries to attack her in a psychotic fit. He then tortures Tyler by smearing his face with his dirty diaper. Following a struggle, Becca fatally stabs Nana with a glass shard from a broken mirror, then runs to the kitchen and attacks Pop Pop. As Pop Pop gains the upper hand, Tyler knocks him to the floor and kills him by repeatedly bashing his head with the refrigerator door. The teens escape outside, where they are met by their mother and police officers.

After the events, Becca inquires about Loretta's departure from home fifteen years prior. Loretta recalls a severe dispute with her parents, where she struck her mother and was hit back by her father. Subsequently, Loretta chose to leave and disregarded their efforts to reach out. She admits that mending their relationship was always an option if she had desired it. Loretta advises Becca to release any resentment towards her father's desertion, prompting Becca to reconsider and ultimately decide to feature her father in their documentary, despite previously stating she wouldn't.

At home, Tyler lays down a freestyle rap recounting his and Becca's escapade with the impostor grandparents, as Becca watches with approval.

• Olivia DeJonge as Becca
• Ed Oxenbould as Tyler
• Kathryn Hahn as Loretta Jamison
• Deanna Dunagan as "Nana"\Maria Bella Jamison
• Peter McRobbie as "Pop Pop"\Frederick Spencer Jamison
• Benjamin Kanes as Corin
• Celia Keenan-Bolger as Stacey
• Jon Douglas Rainey, Brian Gildea, Shawn Gonzalez, and Richard Barlow as police
• Erica Lynne Marszalek and Shawn Gonzalez as passengers on a train
• Michael Mariano as a hairy-chested contestant

Trailers [ ]

Reviews [ ]

References [ ]

• 1 XXX: Return of Xander Cage
• 2 Lilo & Stitch/Transcript

The Visit Ending, Explained: What’s Wrong With the Grandparents?

In M. Night Shyamalan’s 2015 horror film, ‘The Visit,’ the audience accompanies a pair of young protagonists on a trip that leads to more menacing outcomes than one expects from a visit to Grandma’s house. After their distant grandparents, Nana and Pop Pop, reach out to teenage sibling duo Becca and Tyler, the pair takes the former up on their invitation for a week-long stay. However, upon arrival, armed with several cameras for Becca’s documentary, the two quickly begin noticing the strange happenings that seem to occur at the house after nightfall. Thus, the kids find themselves fending for themselves as each day unravels more erratic behavior by their aging grandparents, with the night bringing something more sinister.

The found footage film builds a compelling thriller narrative that gradually boosts its suspense until the final act delivers a startling and much-anticipated plot twist that fans have come to expect from the filmmaker. Nonetheless, the same conclusive twist may have left some of the viewers with a few questions. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Visit Plot Synopsis

In her late teens, Loretta Jamison ran away with a substitute teacher from her high school, Corin, causing a rift between herself and her parents. As a result, years later, after Corin has abandoned his family, Loretta’s 15-year-old daughter, Becca, and 14-year-old Tyler have never met their grandparents. However, their distant relationship stands to change when the old couple reaches out to their grandkids, extending a home-visit invitation. Even though Loretta is against the idea, she doesn’t try to stop her children after they decide to visit her childhood home.

As such, while Loretta leaves for a cruise with her boyfriend, her kids take the train to visit their grandparents with promises of routine Skype calls. Becca, an aspiring filmmaker, decides to document the entire thing in hopes of learning the specifics about her mother and grandparents’ falling out. Consequently, Bella and Fredrick Spencer arrive at the train station on Monday morning to pick up their grandkids with enthusiastic smiles. Their first day together goes smoothly, and as it comes to an end, the kids’ grandpa, Pop Pop, instructs them about a 9:30 bedtime rule.

Although the kids don’t think of it much at first, Becca learns the merit of following through with the rule after she ventures out for a midnight snack and witnesses her Nana, sick and frantically throwing up. Even more frightening, the morning after, the woman abruptly and manically chases the kids under the house’s crawlspace during an impromptu game of hide-n-seek. Throughout the day, the kids’ concern grows further after noticing a few disturbing things about Pop Pop, such as his lack of bowel control and tendency to attack strangers in a fit of paranoia.

The following night, Tyler’s worries grow after he spots Nana wildly scratching at the walls outside the kids’ guest room in a stark state of undress. However, after Becca asks Pop Pop about the older woman’s condition, she receives a plausible answer about Nana’s sundowning issue, establishing her concerning after-hours behavior is similar to sleepwalking.

The explanation satisfies Becca, who attempts to return to her mission to learn about her mother’s relationship with Nana and Pop Pop. Still, she doesn’t make much progress since the topic seems to trigger a violent episode in her grandmother. Meanwhile, Tyler remains weary of his grandparents’ actions and insists they should spy on them by setting up cameras in the living room. Although Becca is initially against the idea, she agrees after walking in on Pop Pop with a rifle’s barrel in his mouth.

Even so, the plan backfires when Nana spots the camera on her nightly manic episode and attempts to break into the kids’ room armed with a knife. Once Becca realizes their lives may be in danger after reviewing the night’s footage, she decides to ask Loretta to pick them up on account of the dangerous circumstances. However, the kids are in for a big surprise when they show the elderly couple to their mother from a window, only to learn that the people they have spent the past few days with are not their grandparents.

The Visit Ending: Who Are The Old Couple? What Did They Do To The Real Grandparents?

As a slow burn of mourning suspense and horror, the film reveals Nana and Pop Pop’s concerning attributes in slow bouts. At first, the behavior that the couple exhibits can be easily explained as a condition of their old age, with sundowning, memory issues, and paranoia forming the baseline. Yet, as the film progresses, the old couple becomes more and more dangerous— first toward themselves and then the kids.

Due to Loretta’s dramatic exit from her parents’ house, the woman seldom speaks to the couple, even as she regularly calls the kids. Furthermore, a seemingly innocent accident damages Becca’s webcam, robbing the mother of any visual cues. Therefore, it isn’t until Thursday morning, when Becca and Tyler have begun fearing for their lives, that Loretta glimpses at the old couple. Consequently, she realizes all this time, her kids have been living with a pair of strangers who are pretending to be their grandparents.

The revelation immediately sets Loretta into action, who tries to contact the cops and reach her kids as soon as possible. In the meantime, she advises her kids to seek help from the neighbors to put distance between themselves and the imposters. Nevertheless, the old couple prevents Becca and Tyler from leaving the house with the idea of a family game night. Thus, with tension in the air, the kids find themselves enduring a game of Yahtzee until the old woman’s incoming mental episode gives Becca an excuse to slip away.

Using the opportunity to explore the house and learn about the imposters, Becca ventures into the forbidden basement, where she suspects her actual grandparents to be. Inside, she finds all the answers to her questions as Becca’s hunch turns out to be true in the worst way possible.

As it would turn out, the imposter old couple is a pair of psychiatric hospital patients, where the actual Bella and Patrick Spencer volunteered. The psychotic couple believed they were from an alien planet, Sinmorfitellia. As such, the pair drowned their own kids inside a well that they believed to hold a passage to the alien planet. For the same reason, they were being under monitoring in the psychic hospital.

Nonetheless, the couple escaped their bounds after the Spencers revealed their plans for a family reunion with their grandkids. Envious of the other couple, the imposters, Claire and Mitchell, killed the former pair and overtook their identities to spend the week with Becca and Tyler. Consequently, the duo managed to evade outsiders anytime they came looking for them at the house and ultimately killed their neighbor, Stacey, when she realized their reality.

Soon after Becca learns this truth, Mitchell locks her up in a room with a psychotic Claire, undergoing her violent episode. Despite their earlier attempts at domestic bliss, the couple’s instincts compel them to harm the children. Nevertheless, before the older woman can choke Becca to death, the girl manages to get her hands on a mirror shard and stabs her attacker to death. Afterward, she rushes to her younger brother’s aid, whom Mitchel is psychologically torturing.

However, with his sister’s element of surprise, Tyler manages to overpower Mitchell, unleashing raw rage and bashing the older man to death by slamming the refrigerator door at his head. Ultimately, after killing the old couple pretending to be their grandparents, Becca and Tyler make it out of the experience alive and reunite with their mother.

Why Did Loretta Stop Talking To Her Parents?

By the film’s end, Loretta’s sore relationship with her parents remains the one last mystery. Arguably, the woman’s reluctance to speak to her parents played a part in the kids’ entrapment since the latter had no point of reference to distinguish their relatives from strangers. Furthermore, part of Becca’s curiosity about her grandparents stemmed from Loretta’s refusal to speak about them to her own kids.

As such, after Becca and Tyler have returned to the safety of their home, Loretta sits down for one last interview for her daughter’s documentary, where she speaks about her past with her parents. When 19-year-old Loretta tried to run away from home with Corin, her high school teacher, the former’s parents wanted to stop her. Nevertheless, the same only resulted in an altercation where Loretta hit her mother, followed by the former’s father hitting his daughter.

Therefore, Loretta’s last day on the farm gave birth to several familial complications. Although Loretta’s parents tried to apologize and solve things afterward, the woman continued to avoid them years and years into the future. For the same reason, Loretta imparts a lesson to her daughter to never hold grudges so hard that they end up ruining things. In turn, Becca, who despises her father for abandoning them, decides to learn from her mother’s mistakes. Unlike Loretta, who refused to speak to her parents, leading to regret after their death, Becca chooses to include home videos of her father in the documentary to close the narrative as a sign of her forgiveness.

Read More: Is The Visit 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.

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The Visit (2015)

Synopsis: the terrifying story of a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents' remote pennsylvania farm for a weeklong trip. once the children discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home are growing smaller every day., connect with us.

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