the visit movie schizophrenia

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Provider search, meta data and taxonomies filter, mental health in the movies, a review of “the visit”: an open letter to m. night shyamalan.

This article contains spoilers for The Visit, The Village, The Happening and The Sixth Sense. If you don’t want the details of these films ruined for you, watch them first and meet me back here.

Dear Mr. Shyamalan,

I want to discuss your latest work, The Visit with you. I went to see this Horror flick soon after its release expecting to be shocked and entertained by another legendary M. Night Shyamalan twist ending. Instead all I witnessed was a trope-filled movie containing a heaping portion of mental illness stigma.

In the film, you have two teenagers who go to spend a week with their estranged grandparents. When their mother was a teenager she had a horrible falling out with her parents therefore these children have never met their grandparents. Now the grandparents (who work at a psychiatric hospital) want to get to know their grandchildren. First of all, this whole situation is barely believable but I put up with it in hopes of a cool ending. The teens, who are conveniently filming everything, arrive at their grandparents rural home and start to notice their grandparents strange behavior. First the grandmother is seen wandering around the house late at night vomiting. Then she is running, skipping and crawling around the house while giggling and growling. The grandfather explains this away by saying the grandmother has Sundowners; a side effect of advanced Alzheimer’s where the darkness of the evening causes hallucinations and strange behavior. But as time wears on, the grandfather starts to behave strangely as well. He attacks a man who he thinks is watching him, he is caught a few seconds away from committing suicide and admits to seeing a white apparition with yellow eyes follow him around. During this time the grandmother’s behavior gets more intense as she almost strangles herself when she is caught having a hallucination, coaxes the granddaughter into the oven and attempts to kill the children in their sleep when she discovers their video camera is recording her.

The only hint of truth in The Visit lies in the two escaped patients’ reasoning for wanting to spend time with these children. The female patient killed her children in a delusion about how aliens would give them eternal life if she drowned them in a pond. The male patient was shunned by everyone he knew when he admitted to seeing things that weren’t actually there. It appears both have been living in a psychiatric hospital for many years, if not decades. They wanted this one week with these two children to have the family that mental illness denied them.  That is the only piece of truth that this movie was able to produce about mental illness because stigma, isolation and forced prolonged institutionalization aren’t helping anyone recover from their disorder. Even though this part humanizes the two escaped patients, the film instantly switches back to showing these people with mental illness running around killing or attempting to kill people.

A few decades ago it was new and exciting to have a horror movie killer be “psychotic” or “criminally insane” but now it’s just a used up offensive cop out where real writing could have taken place. Instead of noticing how offensive this film might be to people with mental illness or have loved ones with mental illness, you were too focused on winning the tween audience with your references to rap, slang and overuse of cheap jump scares. I know you have the cinematic chops to create a thrilling twist ending that doesn’t add to the stigma against people living with a mental illness.

Best of luck with your next film,

Veronique Hoebeke, Associate Editor

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Veronique Hoebeke for www.rtor.org

12 thoughts on “ a review of “the visit”: an open letter to m. night shyamalan ”.

Good for you Veronique…why not pass your comments on to the moguls in Hollywood.

Well put! Your blog posts are terrific!

Too bad his next film was “Split” *eye roll*

Anna, I totally agree. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw the trailer for “Split.”

If the M. Night Universe is all connected, it goes beyond mental disorder in the film. The underlying context is that both of the “Grand Parents” are deeply affected by their encounters with the supernatural. There are strange forces at work in M. Nights universe, and I did not see this as an assault, or a negative commentary on mental illness in the slightest. But you are correct that many will probably see it as such. That said, I thought it was pretty fantastic, relatively harmless found footage horror film.

I just watched this pos celluloid and this review is spot ON. I had two sibs who suffered tremendously from schizophrenia and this was DI$GUSTING and as stated aimed at tweens and teens to make $ (and further viciously stigmatize and demonize the mentally ill to yet another generation). M Night Shyamalan is now pure $hit in my book. Also, those who casually and jokingly toss around mental illness terms like schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.. need to STOP it because it’s immensely cruel and ignorant.

LMAO. The person who wrote this letter needs to seriously relax.

I’m sorry but, it’s a movie. I can guarantee u that middle school kids are smarter than what u think and won’t think that schizophrenia causes murderous tendencies. This is a generation of kids who uses the internet for anything and also there’s a lot of great teachers out there. You are taking this way out of proportion tbh, it was meant to be for entertainment. That’s just my opinion tho. I understand your concern to a level, but I feel as if u fail to realize that middle schoolers are smarter than what u think.

This is spot on, a few years ago I wouldn’t have been aware of how damaging is the representation of mental illness (and race, and gender, etc etc etc) in movies, but for all of you who say the writer of this article needs to relax and that “it’s just a movie”…dudes!!! and dudettes!! REPRESENTATION influences the way we see the world!! And mental illnesses and disabilities are almost always shown either as pitiful or dangerous…movies and shows are part of our daily lives, if we only see abled-bodies, white, thin, hetero, cis people as the heroes and leaders and desirable people (and “good”)-which by the way, we still kind of do-, it’s not like you make the connection right away, but your brain does. And you project those images on the world around you. Also, if you haven’t experienced mental illness (or someone from your family), or any kind of invalidation, discrimination, or oppression, then think twice before dismissing articles like this. Research, be open to learning. There is nothing wrong with being privileged but don’t use it to measure other life experiences.

Dano Dunham is right.

You ruined this movie for yourself

IT IS EARLY FEBRUARY, 2022, AND I WAS GOING FROM CHANNEL TO CHANNEL AND CAME ACROSS “THE VISIT”.

I REALLY THOUGHT IT WAS A DOCUMENTARY, BECAUSE WHAT I HAD JUST BEEN WATCHING RIGHT BEFORE THIS FILM, WAS A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT A LIFE CHANGING INCIDENT THAT THE NARRATOR HAD GONE THRU.

DID NOT SEE “THE VISIT” FROM THE BEGINNING AS I CAME TO IT AFTER IT HAD BEEN ON, NEAR BEGINNING BUT NOT INTO IT. I THOUGHT WHAT A BRILLIANT THING THAT IS BEING DONE IN MAKING A DOCUMENTARY WITH THE ACTUAL PERSON ABOUT A LIFE CHANGING SITUATION THAT THE THE ACTUAL PERSON, PERSONS HAD EXPERIENCED IN THEIR LIFE. I TOTALLY BELIEVED THAt “THE VISIT” WAS A DOCUMENTARY AND A VERY SCARY ONE AT THAT. AFTER IT WAS OVER I WAS CURIOUS IF IT WERE ONE OR NOT, I GOOGLED IT AND FOUND OUT. IT FELT TO ME THAT THOSE IN THE FIML WERE REAL PEOPLE AND NOT ACTORS. I AM IN MY EARLY 80’S SO NEEDLESS TO SAY THE BEHAVIOR OF THE GRANDPARENTS GOT TO ME AND I STILL BEING SANE, SO TO SPEAK, HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE DISEASES OF THE MIND MENTIONED IN THE ABOVE REVIEWS ARE AUTHENTICALLY ABOUT. SO THRILLED TO HAVE LEARNED FROM THE ABOVE REVIEWS THAT PERHAPS GETTING SOME OF THE SENIOR PROBLEMS OF THE MIND THAT LIFE MIGHT THROW OUR WAY ARE NOT EXACTLY THOSE THAT ARE DEPICTED IN THE FILM. BUT WATCHING THE FILM JUST NOW GOT ME WORRIED A BIT!!!!! LOVED THE ACTING, THE 5 LEADS ARE TERRIFIC. LOVED, ALSO, THE OTHER ACTORS WHO PLAYED THE SMALLER ROLLS. I HAVE HAD TRAINING AND WORKED IN THE THEATRE.

Thank you for commenting on Veronique’s blog post and sharing your impressions of the film. You make a good case for how easy it is to mistake the characters’ behavior in this movie for a realistic depiction of mental illness.

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The Visit Explained (Plot And Ending)

The Visit is a 2015  horror   thriller  directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It follows two siblings who visit their estranged grandparents only to discover something is very wrong with them. As the children try to uncover the truth, they are increasingly terrorized by their grandparents’ bizarre behaviour. Here’s the plot and ending of The Visit explained; spoilers ahead.

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Where To Watch?

To find where to stream any movie or series based on your country, use This Is Barry’s Where To Watch .

Oh, and if this article doesn’t answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and I’ll get you the answer .  You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site.

Here are links to the key aspects of the movie:

• – The Story
• – Plot Explained
• – Ending Explained
• – The Sense Of Dread
• – Separation, Remorse, and Personal Fears
• – Frequently Asked Questions Answered
• – Wrap Up

What is the story of The Visit?

The Visit is about two kids visiting their grandparents for the first time. They are also going there to hope and rebuild a bridge between their mom and grandparents and help their mom heal after a painful divorce. The movie is in documentary form.

The Visit is one of the most unnerving and realistic horror stories. A good thing about classic horror movies is that, after the movie ends, you can switch it off and go to bed,  knowing that you’re safe . Vampires, ghosts, and demonic powers don’t exist, and even if you are prone to these kinds of esoteric beliefs, there are safeguards. If your home is not built in an Indian burial ground and you haven’t bought any creepy-looking dolls from your local antiquary, you’re perfectly safe.

However, what about the idea of two kids spending five days with two escaped psychiatric ward patients in a remote farmhouse? Now, this is a thought that will send shivers down your spine. It’s a story that sounds not just realistic but real. It’s  something that might have happened in the past  or might happen in the future.

This is  what  The Visit  is all about . This idea, coupled with documentary-form storytelling, is why the movie is so unnerving to watch.

The Visit: Plot Explained

Loretta’s past.

As a young girl, Loretta Jamison fell in love with her high school teacher and decided to skip her hometown with him. Before leaving, she had a heated altercation with her parents and hasn’t seen them since. At the movie’s start, she is a single mom of 15-year-old Becca and 14-year-old Tyler, and she  hasn’t spoken to her parents in 15 years .

What really happened on the day Loretta left?

Loretta’s mom tries to stop her from leaving the house, and Loretta hits her mom, and her dad hits her. Soon after, her parents try to reach out to Loretta, but she refuses to take their calls, and years go by.

Meet The Grandparents

Years later, Loretta’s parents reach out to  meet their grandchildren . The grandparents are, seemingly, wholly reformed and now even help at the local psychiatric hospital. Although initially not too fond of the idea, Loretta is persuaded by the insistence of her children. While she had no intention of visiting the parents, she permitted her children to pay their grandparents a five-day visit.

At The Grandparents’

Their first meeting with Nana and Pop Pop starts on the right foot. They start getting to know each other, and other than a simple generational gap, nothing seems too strange. The only thing that seems off is that they are warned  not to leave the room after 9:30 in the evening .

The kids break this rule, and on the first night, they notice  Nana acting erratically , projectile vomiting, scratching wallpaper with her bare hands, and running around the house on all fours. Grandpa appears paranoid and hides his adult diapers in the garden shed, and the situation escalates each day.

The Visit Ending Explained: What happens in the end?

The ending of Visit has the kids finally showing the elderly couple to Loretta. She, completely horrified, states that  those are not her parents . The pair posing as Pop Pop and Nana are escaped psychiatric institution patients who murdered their grandparents and took their places.

The kids survive, kill their captors, and are found alive and well by their mom and the police. Becca kills Nana with a shard from the mirror, thus symbolically overcoming her fear of her reflection. Tyler kills Pop Pop by repeatedly slamming him in the head with a refrigerator door after overcoming his germaphobia and anxiety about freezing.

The Sense Of Dread

The elements of horror in this movie are just  perfectly executed . First of all, the film is shot as a documentary. Becca is an aspiring filmmaker who records the entire trip with her camera. From time to time, we see an interview of all the characters, which just serves as the perfect vessel for characterization.

No Ghouls or Cults

Another thing that evokes dread is  realism . There are no supernatural beings or demonic forces. It’s just two kids alone in a remote farmstead with two creepy, deranged people. Even in the end, when Loretta finds out what’s happening, it takes her hours to get there with the police. The scariest part is that it’s not that hard to imagine something along those lines really happening.

The  house itself is dread-inducing . The place is old and rustic. Like in The Black Phone soundproofing a room  could have prevented kids from hearing Nana rummaging around the house without a clear idea of what was happening, but this was not the case, as the old couple weren’t that capable.

The  characters  themselves  are perfectly played . Something is unnerving about Pop Pop and Nana from the very first scene. It’s the Uncanny Valley scenario where you feel that something’s off and shakes you to the core, but you have no idea what it is.

Separation, Remorse, and Personal Fears

What this movie does the best is explore the  ugly side of separation, old grudges, and remorse . The main reason why kids are insistent on visiting their grandparents is out of their desire to help their mom.

They see she’s remorseful for never  working things out with her parents . In light of her failed marriage and the affair that caused it to end, she might live with the doubt that her parents were right all along. This makes her decision and altercation with her parents even worse. Reconciling when you know you were wrong is harder than forgiving the person who wronged you.

The Kids’ Perspective

There are personal fears and  traumas of the kids . Tyler, in his childish naivete, is convinced that his father left because he was disappointed in him as a son. Tyler tells Becca that he froze during one game he played, which disappointed his dad so much that he had to leave. While this sounds ridiculous to any adult (and even Becca), it’s a matter of fact to Tyler. As a result of this trauma, Tyler also developed germaphobia. In Becca’s own words, this gives him a greater sense of control.

On the other hand,  Becca refuses to look at herself in the mirror  or stand in front of the camera if she can help it. Both kids  had to overcome their fears to survive , which is a solid and clear metaphor for how these things sometimes turn out in real life.

Frequently Asked Questions Answered

The visit: what’s wrong with the grandparents who are the grandparents.

The people who hosted Becca and Tyler were runaway psychiatric hospital patients who murdered the real grandparents and took their place. Nana’s impostor (Claire) was actually responsible for murdering her children by drowning them in a well. Pop Pop’s impostor (Mitchell) wanted to give Claire a second chance at having kids / being a grandparent.

How did the imposter grandparents know about the kids’ visit?

It appears Claire and Mitchell hear the real Nana and Pop Pop brag about their grandkids’ visit. They also learned that neither the grandparents nor the kids had seen each other. The real grandparents appear to have been consulting in the same hospital Claire and Mitchell were being treated. The two crazies take this opportunity to break out, kill the real grandparents and go to the station to pick up the children.

The Visit: What is Sinmorfitellia?

Claire and Mitchell believe that Sinmorfitellia is an alien planet, and the creatures from there lurk on Earth. They spit into the waters of wells and ponds all day, which can put people into a deep sleep. They take  sleeping with the fishes  quite literally. Long ago, Claire drowned her children believing they would go to Sinmorfitellia.

The Visit: What happened to the real grandparents?

Claire and Mitchel killed Nana and Pop Pop and put them in the basement. This information went unnoticed because Becca’s laptop’s camera was damaged by Nana, so Loretta could not confirm the imposters. Claire and Mitchel were not present every time someone came to visit, so no one suspected foul play except Stacey, who received help from the real grandparents. As a result, she is killed.

What did Claire and Mitchel intend to do?

They plan to go to Sinmorfitellia with Becca and Tyler. They all plan to die on that last night and enter the well, which they believe is their path to the alien planet where they can be happy together. This is perhaps why the grandparents hang Stacey outside the house because they don’t care about being caught.

The Visit: What’s wrong with Nana?

We don’t know what caused Nana’s mental illness, but she was crazy enough to kill her two children by putting them in suitcases and drowning them in a pond. It appears she suffers from schizophrenia as she has delusions.

The Visit: Wrap Up

From the standpoint of horror, The Visit has it all. An unnerving realistic scenario, real-life trauma, and an atmosphere of fear. Combine this with  some of the best acting work in the genre  and a documentary-style movie, and you’ve got yourself a real masterpiece.

On the downside, the movie leaves you with a lot of open questions like:

• Considering the kids have never seen the grandparents and are going alone, Loretta didn’t ensure her kids knew what her parents looked like?
• How are Claire and Mitchell out and about so close to the hospital without being caught?
• Considering they are mentally ill, how did Claire and Mitchell plot such a thorough plan? (e.g. strategically damaging the camera of the laptop)
• I understand  Suspension Of Disbelief  in horror films, but neither kids drop their cameras despite the terror they go through only so we, the audience, can get the entire narrative?

What were your thoughts on the plot and ending of the movie The Visit? Drop your comments below!

Stacey is a talented freelance writer passionate about all things pop culture. She has a keen eye for detail and a natural talent for storytelling. She’s a super-fan of Game of Thrones, Cats, and Indie Rock Music and can often be found engrossed in complex films and books. Connect with her on her social media handles to learn more about her work and interests.

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.

‘The Visit’ Ending Explained: Family Reunions Can Be Torture

What's wrong with Grandma?

The Big Picture

• In M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit , the main characters discover that the grandparents they are staying with are actually dangerous imposters.
• The twist is revealed when the children's mother realizes that the people claiming to be their grandparents are strangers who have assumed their identities.
• The climax of the film involves a tense and dangerous confrontation between the children and the imposters, resulting in the reveal of the true identities of the grandparents.

M. Night Shyamalan is considered a master at delivering drop-your-popcorn-level twisty conclusions to his haunting films. People still talk about the end of The Sixth Sense as perhaps one of the greatest twists in the history of modern cinema. The jaw-dropper at the end of Unbreakable ranks close to the top as well. But there is another pretty decent curveball that the director tosses up in a lesser-known movie that is currently streaming on Max. In 2016's The Visit (which is currently streaming on Max ) he plays on the hallowed relationship between children and their doting grandparents. How could Shyamalan toy with the innocence of this? It is an excellent film that deftly blends found footage with the director's signature slow-burning tension to leave audiences with yet another "WTF?" moment . Let's dig into what exactly happens at the end of his underrated movie, The Visit .

Two siblings become increasingly frightened by their grandparents' disturbing behavior while visiting them on vacation.

What is 'The Visit' About?

Young Becca Jamison ( Olivia DeJonge ) and little brother Tyler ( Ed Oxenbould ) are sent away by their divorced mother Loretta ( Kathryn Hahn ) to finally meet and spend some time with their grandparents , Frederick, or Pop Pop ( Peter McRobbie ), and Maria, better known as Nana ( Deanna Dunagan ). They have a nice rural estate away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and it feels like this is going to be a heartwarming story of two generations of the Jamisons getting to know each other. It seems a bit odd that these two preteens have yet to meet their maternal grandparents, but Shyamalan explains that nicely in the first few scenes: Loretta has had a years-long falling out with her parents after leaving the family farm at the age of 19.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Eerie Found Footage Horror Movie Deserves Another Look

Loretta is still estranged from her parents but she wants her children to have a relationship with them — she only wants to go on a cruise with her new boyfriend and needs someone to watch the kids. So, the children have no idea what their Nana and Pop Pop actually look like. And you can feel something amiss from the very beginning of the film as the two precocious but excited kids set off to meet their grandparents. The entire film is told through the kids' (mainly Becca, an aspiring filmmaker) camcorder, as they have decided to document their trip. It's clear right away that Becca resents her father as a result of his abandonment, as she refuses to include any footage of her dad in her film.

Shyamalan Expertly Builds Tension in 'The Visit'

Upon the kids' arrival, Nana and Pop Pop seem like regular grandparents with regular questions like, "Do you like sports?" and "Why are your pants so low?" Nana tends to the chores like cooking and cleaning while Pop Pop handles the more rugged work outdoors like cutting wood. Naturally, Shyamalan tightens the screws immediately when the audience discovers that there is little to no cell phone reception, so he can isolate our four players into a single space. The Grandparents seem fairly easygoing but they have one strict rule — the kids must not come out of their bedroom after 9:30 pm. The very first night, Nana exhibits some bizarre behavior, walking aimlessly through the downstairs portion of the house and vomiting on the floor. However, the next morning she seems to be just fine.

Pop Pop explains to Becca and Tyler that she suffers from "sundowning" which is a very real diagnosis that usually affects the elderly . He tells them that at night Nana gets this feeling that something is in her body and just wants to get out. Pop Pop is clear and coherent, and yet again, we, along with our two young lead characters, assume the grandparents, while odd, are nothing to fear. A Zoom call with Loretta further assuages their fear by explaining away all the strange behavior as part of getting older. It's a back-and-forth that Shyamalan expertly navigates by pushing the audience only so far before reeling it back in with a logical explanation. But soon, things become inexplicably dire and dangerous.

"What's in the shed?" Tyler asks as he looks into the camera while contributing to Becca's documentary . "Is it dead bodies?" What he discovers is a pile of used, discarded adult diapers filled with Pop Pop's excrement. The smell sends Tyler reeling, and he falls out of the shed onto the snowy ground. This time, it's Nana who explains away Pop Pop's odd behavior. She tells her grandson that Pop Pop has incontinence and is so proud that he hides his waste in the shed. At this point, everything seems very odd to say the least, but there is nothing to suggest anything sinister is afoot . Not yet anyway. Even after he attacks a random stranger who he believes is watching him out on the streets on a trip into town, you still just think that maybe Pop Pop may just have a loose screw. However, the sense that these elderly people are something more than doting parents is intensified when Nana leaves Becca inside the oven for several seconds.

What Is the Twist at the End of 'The Visit'?

"Those aren't your grandparents?" Get the heck out of here! What?! Loretta finally sees the two people claiming to be her parents and tells Becca and Tyler via Skype that they aren't their beloved Nana and Pop Pop, but two complete strangers who have assumed their identities. Loretta immediately calls the police, but it will take hours for help to arrive at the remote farmhouse. Becca and Tyler are going to have to play along with these dangerous imposters. After the most tense and awkward game of Yahtzee in the history of board games, things get really, really ugly. Nana and Pop Pop haven't laid a hand on either of the kids in the movie so far. You can feel the slow and excruciating tension that Shyamalan is building . He knows that the audience is waiting for that "point of no return" moment when it is crystal clear that Becca and Tyler's lives are in danger. Becca manages to escape to the basement to discover the dead bodies of two elderly people murdered. Nana and Pop Pop are escaped mental patients from the nearby psychiatric hospital and have killed the real Jamison grandparents.

What Happens at the End of 'The Visit'?

Pop Pop realizes their cover is blown and becomes physical with Becca. He's upset that Becca is ruining Nana's perfect week as a grandmother. He tells her, "We're all dying today, Becca!" pushing her into a pitch-black upstairs room. Meanwhile, he grabs Tyler and takes him into the kitchen, and does one of the most foul and stomach-turning things ever in a Shyamalan film . He takes his used diaper and shoves it in the boy's face. He knows that Tyler is a germaphobe, and it is the most diabolical and traumatizing thing he could do to the boy. Becca is trapped upstairs with the sundowning Nana, fighting for her own life. After a struggle, Becca grasps a shard of glass from the broken mirror and is able to stab Nana multiple times in the gut.

She breaks the lock on the door and runs downstairs to help Tyler. She pulls "Pop Pop" off her traumatized younger brother. Suddenly, Tyler snaps out of his stupor and releases the pent-up anger of his football tackling lessons with his estranged father. He knocks Pop Pop to the ground and slams the refrigerator door on his head over and over . This is significant because earlier in the movie, Becca ribs Tyler about how he froze up during a big play in a youth football game, and this time he comes through to save Becca in the final kitchen scene conquering his biggest fears.

Loretta and the police arrive and the kids run frantically out of the house. The final scene has Loretta setting the record straight for the documentary about the traumatic moments surrounding her running away from home. 15 years before the events of the film, before Becca was born, Loretta fell out with her parents over her decision to marry her teacher. The argument led to Loretta and her parents getting physical with each other, and she left home that night and never responded to their attempts and pleas to reconnect. It's the most emotional scene in the film as Loretta is feeling a huge amount of guilt at never getting to say she was sorry for the strained relationship between her and her parents or getting to possibly hear an apology for the wrongs they also committed. Loretta tells Becca "Don't hold on to anger! You hear me?" The two then share a meaningful embrace. And the final shot is of the two kids with their dad on a birthday when they were much younger.

The Visit is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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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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Film credits.

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

Cinematography

• Maryse Alberti
• Luke Franco Ciarrocch

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

M. Night Shyamalan's twist-filled 2015 shocker The Visit had audiences guessing until the very end, but is the found footage horror film a true story?

• "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.

Every Character M. Night Shyamalan Played In His Own Movies

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 First "Found Footage" Movie Came 38 Years Before The Blair Witch Project

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.

How Many M. Night Shyamalan Movies REALLY Have Twists

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 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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How schizophrenia is misrepresented in TV and film — and how we can do better

The schizophrenic characters we see are usually supernatural villains, criminals, or inspirational fodder.

Social Sharing

We've all seen popular movies and TV shows that have used schizophrenia to drive a story forward. But how often do we stop to consider what those representations actually mean? How do they portray the experience of actually living with schizophrenia, and how do the stereotypes that these representations lean on come back around to harm mad and disabled people?

• Anne-iversaries Looking back at Primal Fear and the dangers of using mental illness for villainous plot twists

A 2021 GLAAD report found that disabled characters made up only 2.8 per cent of all series regular characters in the 2021-22 television season in the U.S. That's roughly 22 characters out of 775 total examined. When looking at that figure, especially considering that 22 per cent of Canadians and 26 per cent of Americans live with visible and invisible disabilities, people with disabilities are shockingly underrepresented onscreen.

What's even worse is that the few representations of disability and madness that we do see are wrapped up in stereotypes which impact how we view mad and disabled people around us. Schizophrenia is one of the conditions that the general public views most negatively , according to a 2014 study published in the journal Psychiatry Research . The prevalence of stereotypes also creates internalized stigma that impacts the self-image of disabled people. 

A commonly observed trope in TV and movies represents schizophrenia as criminal and violent. (Think Norman Bates in Psycho , Mr. Cleg in Spider , or any of the dozens of characters from shows like Criminal Minds ' endless carousels of violent depictions of madness and neurodiversity.) Horror, thrillers, and true crime often frame mad people as villains whose motivations are blamed on conditions like schizophrenia, which perpetuates the idea that people who have those conditions are a danger to others. 

Another common representation of schizophrenia makes the condition out to be supernatural or magical, like in the show Yellowjackets or the film Donnie Darko . When schizophrenia is placed in the supernatural or fantasy realms, it diminishes the real-life experience of living with schizophrenia and suggests that it is beyond humanity or our understanding. By aligning schizophrenia with demonic entities and malicious spirits, these supernatural representations similarly perpetuate the idea of schizophrenic people as "other," which can ostracize them and negatively impact their self-perception.

Not every trope makes people with schizophrenia look like villains, but even the more well-intentioned attempts can be harmful in their own way. Take, for instance, the portrayal of the "supercrip" as seen in A Beautiful Mind , The Soloist , or the show Legion. "Supercrip" is a term used by the disabled community to refer to stories where people "overcome" their disability. Although these depictions are sometimes created to challenge the perceptions of what mad and disabled people can and can't do, as explained by Stella Young , they "objectify disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people."

• Shelfies Can you hear the hum? How Jordan Tannahill's The Listeners illuminated my experience with mental illness

This trope also suggests madness and disability exist entirely within a person instead of engaging with the oppressive social, legal, and medical conditions that create barriers for mad and disabled people. "Supercrip" stories can act as a defense mechanism for the status quo — because if one mad or disabled person could beat the odds and live happily in our current society, ostensibly, all mad and disabled people should have it within themselves to do the same. 

Criminal and violent representation in Criminal Minds

A 2012 study found that, in 41 movies studied, a majority of schizophrenic characters displayed violent behaviour toward others and themselves, and almost a third of those characters displayed homicidal tendencies. The same study also found that causation is hardly discussed in those films.

Shows like Criminal Minds , which follow a procedural format where a new weekly suspect is pursued by federal officers and caught by the end of the episode, are chock full of exaggerated depictions of schizophrenia. The formulaic approach of Criminal Minds made the show easy to watch, but to keep viewers from getting bored, it had to continue to shock them with more and more gruesome stories. Crimes committed by supposedly schizophrenic people ranged from cannibalism to necrophilia.

Even if the viewer knows to take these stories with a grain of salt, the depiction of these horrific crimes and lack of exploration into a character's motives — coupled with zero follow-up on their fates after they are caught (or often, killed) — reinforced an "us vs. them" mentality that creates a fearsome idea of schizophrenia. This is bolstered by storylines that continuously ask the viewer to sympathize with the neurotypical, non-disabled police, who are billed as heroes for tracking down and capturing the suspects. 

Mad and disabled people are actually more likely to be victims of violence rather than the perpetrators of it. And in  a study in which 46 mad people were interviewed about the stigma they have experienced, people with schizophrenia reported more verbal and physical abuse than any other group in the study.

The show's less overtly negative representations are few and far in between. Spencer Reid's mother Diana, one of the rare recurring characters with schizophrenia, is shown to have a loving relationship with her son. But even though the show sympathizes with her, it also makes her out to be one of the "good ones" against a backdrop of countless violent mad characters; ultimately, whatever positive representation Diana provides is completely overshadowed by an overrepresentation of schizophrenic killers.

Supernatural representation in Yellowjackets

Another common stereotype in TV and movies suggests that schizophrenia is the result of some kind of supernatural force. This trope depicts schizophrenia as something that possesses a person and forces them to do things that they have no control over, often harming others in the process.

Showtime's critically acclaimed 2021 psychological drama Yellowjackets depicts a character named Lottie who experiences hallucinations after running out of her medication for an unnamed condition. While the show was praised for its representation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it slips into problematic territory with the way Lottie transforms from a sweet background character to becoming possessed, experiencing premonitions and visions of death, and calling on the girls around her to hurt one of their own. Since this transformation happens after Lottie runs out of her medication, the implication is that she is this way when untreated, which reduces a complex condition to a clichéd representation. Yet again, a mad character becomes a villain or someone to be feared, and the only explanation for their motivation is their madness. 

With just one season out so far, the show is still well-positioned to turn this representation on its head and provide useful commentary about the way Lottie was medicalized at a young age for her apparently atypical behaviour. But if it continues along the same path, Yellowjackets will become another representation of schizophrenia that dehumanizes mad people and causes the viewer to fear them.

"Supercrip" representation in A Beautiful Mind

"Supercrip" stories rely on narratives of inspiration and overcoming adversity. One of the most well-known depictions of schizophrenia is A Beautiful Mind , the 2001 film starring Russell Crowe. A Beautiful Mind won four of the eight Academy Awards it was nominated for, including Best Picture, and is based on the life of mathematician John Nash as told through Sylvia Nasar's unauthorized biography of him. Throughout the film, Nash experiences hallucinations that lead him to be forcibly institutionalized; his condition also inadvertently causes him to put his infant son in danger. But Nash is later able to overcome his hallucinations by sheer willpower and return to his work, eventually going on to win the Nobel Prize. 

Some have noted that schizophrenia is generally well-represented in A Beautiful Mind , and the viewer is certainly meant to sympathize with John Nash instead of seeing him as a violent person or a criminal. Nash's ability to exercise control over his life and learn to live with schizophrenia, especially with the support of his loved ones, can be an empowering thing for mad people to see on screen. But nevertheless, this type of story paints madness and disabilities as individual "problems" that need to be fixed and overcome in order to live "normally."

How can we represent schizophrenia more thoughtfully?

As with so many movies and TV shows about marginalized people, stories about people with schizophrenia are rarely told with mad people in control of the narrative, and the actors who play them are not part of mad and/or disabled communities. While neurotypical and non-disabled actors take home awards and accolades for their portrayals of madness and disability, real mad and disabled people feel the repercussions of these stereotypical depictions reverberating in their everyday lives. 

Mad and disabled people deserve to see themselves represented wholly, not as punchlines, lazy plot points, or inspirational fodder for the benefit of the able-bodied. Our experiences are all unique and multi-faceted, yet the stories told about us are too often boiled down to stereotypes instead of embracing neurodivergence, madness, and disabilities. 

• Video With every tiny movement, Anne Plamondon brings you inside her father's schizophrenia

Increasing or improving representation of schizophrenia in the media will not immediately change societally-rooted ableist attitudes. But empathetic and informed storytelling can help to counteract and correct the misinformation that is shared through TV and movies. With stories about schizophrenia still so deeply entrenched in stereotypes that impact the real-life treatment of mad people and the inequities they face, the need to tell better stories isn't just critical — it could be life-saving.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shailee Koranne is a Toronto-based writer who wants to change the way people feel about Geminis. She writes about media, pop culture, and politics, and her work has appeared in VICE, Bitch Magazine, Canadaland, and elsewhere. Find her on Instagram @shailee.jpg and Twitter @shaileekoranne.

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• 10 Canadians who helped make Yellowjackets and Station Eleven the zeitgeist shows of this strange moment

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All Movies About Schizophrenia: An Extensive List

Schizophrenia is a relatively rare mental illness affecting slightly over 1% of the American adult population. It is a profound, yet debilitating mental illness that results in a person experiencing symptoms such as: depression, auditory hallucinations, delusions, flat affect, and paranoia. In order to get a better understanding of the illness, many people turn to watching movies. There have been many movies released that depict this illness in one way or another. Although some of these movies are fiction, some are based on a true life story of a person that had to deal with schizophrenia.

All Movies About Schizophrenia: An Extensive List of Films

The list below consists of movies that specifically are about cases of schizophrenia or are thought to be. They are listed in order by date of release.  Many of these movies are not based on true stories, but some are.  Not all of these movies portray schizophrenia or a main character with schizophrenia, but some have schizophrenic themes and/or overtones.

The Snake Pit (1948) – This movie is based on the novel “The Snake Pit” written by Mary Jane Ward in 1946. The novel tells a story about a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum and cannot recall how she ended up there. This film was considered very well done and actually won an Oscar. The story was based loosely on Mary Jane Ward’s life experiences in psychiatric care. She hears voices, feels out of touch with reality, and doesn’t remember her husband.

Through a Glass Darkly (1961) – This was a Swedish movie that is considered a three-act “chamber film.” Four family members act as mirrors for each other. The entire movie takes place while a family is on vacation on a remote island. One of the characters is released from an insane asylum where she was being treated for schizophrenia.

Images (1972) – This is a British-American movie about a wealthy housewife who experiences many delusions and hallucinations regarding her husband. She is obviously dealing with schizophrenia and has to sort out what is real from what is just in hear head. This movie is classified as a psychological thriller.

No Mercy No Future (Die Berührte) (1981) – This is a German movie about the daughter of uncaring wealthy parents who is locked up in an institution because she has schizophrenia. She experiences hallucinations and wanders the streets in search of God because she doesn’t receive proper psychiatric treatment. She ends up getting company from many strange, wandering men.

Santa Sangre (Holy Blood) (1989) – This was a Mexican-Italian movie with both flashbacks and flash-forwards in the plot. It is set in Mexico and details the crazy story of a boy named Fenix who grew up in a circus. The story involves flashbacks of religious cults, violence, and symbolism. The flash-forward involves drugs, prostitution, and murder.

Nightbreed (1990) – This was a fantasy horror movie about an unstable mental patient who is led to believe by his doctor that he is in fact a serial killer. His doctor is the actual murderer, but since he is struggling with mental illness, he is an easy victim for a set up. He eventually finds refuge in an abandoned cemetery. The main character is drugged by his doctor with LSD disguised as lithium and is ordered by his doctor to turn himself in for various murders.

Drop Dead Fred (1991) – This is a comedy fantasy style movie that includes emotional abuse, mental illness, and profanity. A young girl has an imaginary friend named “Drop Dead Fred” who causes chaos around the house and neighborhood. Nobody can see him except the young girl named Lizzie. Her mother is emotionally abusive and highly controlling. Although this isn’t completely schizophrenic behavior, some would argue that it could be classified as such.

The Fisher King (1991) – This is a comedy-drama style movie about a radio DJ who tries to help a man whose life he unintentionally ruined. He made a lot of insensitive, rude comments to a depressed individual who was a caller on his radio show. The guy who called the radio show ends up committing a mass murder at a popular Manhattan bar. The radio DJ ends up becoming suicidal for what had happened in regards to the caller into his show. He eventually attempts suicide, but instead is rescued by a homeless man suffering from catatonic schizophrenia.

Clean, Shaven (1993) – This movie is about a man who suffers from schizophrenia and is trying to get his daughter back from her adoptive parents. This movie attempts to take an objective look at the illness of schizophrenia and individuals that have it.

Benny & Joon (1993) – This was a romantic comedy movie about 2 unusual people that meet each other and fall in love. This film stars Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson as a couple. It has been noted by critics that “Joon” the character played by Masterson suffers from schizophrenia. Joon does experience auditory hallucinations and ends up doing pretty well with a stable routine and her daily medication.

Angel Baby (1995) – This is an Australian drama film about two people that meet during therapy and fall into deep love. Both of these individuals have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. They end up moving in together, getting pregnant and the wife dies during childbirth. Their daughter is given to the husband’s brother.

Conspiracy Theory (1997) – This is an American thriller movie that is about a lawyer working for the U.S. Government. A taxi driver who is a conspiracy theorist believes that most events that happen in the world are a result of government conspiracies and tells his ideas to the lawyer. The lawyer (played by Juilia Roberts) finds him funny because he saved her from a robbery, but doesn’t know that the taxi driver has been spying on her home. Some would suggest that there are overtones of schizophrenia in this movie.

Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) – This is an American drama movie about a young adult with untreated schizophrenia. He lives in a dysfunctional family with his sister who he may have gotten pregnant, and a highly athletic brother, and his authoritarian father. This film was not regarded well by critics.

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) – This is a French historical drama movie that tells a story of St. Joan of Arc – the French war hero and religious martyr of the 15th century. As a young girl, Joan begins having “visions” that inspire her to lead the French battle against English forces. Her success in overcoming the English forces results in Charles VII taking the throne as ruler. Eventually Joan ends up being executed for committing heresy.

A Beautiful Mind (2001) – This is an American biographical drama movie that is based on the life experiences of John Nash (Dr. John Forbes Nash) – who struggled with schizophrenia. It features Russell Crowe playing star character John Nash and was inspired by the bestselling book with the same name written by Sylvia Nasar. The story showcases John Nash as a child prodigy and highlights the onset of paranoid schizophrenia in which he experiences delusions and believes that the F.B.I. is after him. It won four Academy Awards and was well received by critics.

Donnie Darko (2001) – This is a science fiction drama movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, and Patrick Swayze. It documents various adventures of the main character (played by Gyllenhaal) as he searches for meanings of visions that he experiences related to Doomsday. This movie has received pretty positive feedback and still has a large cult following.

The Caveman’s Valentine (2001) – This is an American mystery-drama style movie starring Samuel L. Jackson. It is based on the book “The Caveman’s Valentine” by Geoge Dawes Green that was released in 1994. The plot involves a former family man and pianist studying at Juilliard music school who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and lives in a cave near Inwood Park, New York. He experiences delusions that a man is controlling the world with rays from the Chrysler Building and that his mind is being taken over.

K-PAX (2001) – This is a science fiction, mystery movie starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges about a psychiatric patient who believes he is an alien. The patient claims to be an alien from the planet “K-PAX” – hence the title of the movie. Oddly enough, his outlook on life ends up being an inspiration for other patients as well as his psychiatrist.

Igby Goes Down (2002) – This is a comedy drama style movie that follows the life of a teenager in New York City who tries to cut ties with his family. In the movie, Jason Igby’s father suffers from schizophrenia and is committed to a psychiatric institution. Igby is fearful that he will eventually develop the same mental illness as his father. He sets out on a mission to find a better life, but ends up visiting his godfather.

Spider (2002) – This is a Canadian/British psychological thriller movie about a man who is staying at a halfway house for the mentally ill. When he is released from an institution, he begins to remember a childhood trauma that occurred – his father’s murder. He also recounts other murders that happened while growing up and is taken back to an insane asylum.

Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003) – This movie is adapted from the autobiography written by Liz Murray called “Breaking Night.” Liz is one of two daughters in a Bronx family and her mother has schizophrenia and is addicted to drugs. Her father is a drug addict as well, but has AIDS and lacks social skills. She ends up running away from home with another girl who is being abused. She goes on to become a star student and accomplishes a lot during her collegiate life.

Keane (2004) – This is a drama movie set in New York City that highlights a mentally ill man trying to get over the fact that his daughter was abducted several months prior. He searches for his missing daughter and the main character “Keane” confronts various ticket agents and random strangers with documentation of her disappearance, but no one says they had seen his daughter. He ends up doing drugs and becomes increasingly paranoid – he thinks he is being followed. Some of the symptoms he exhibits are schizophrenic in nature.

Spider Forest (2004) – This is a Korean psychological thriller movie about a man who awakens in the middle of a forest and finds a cabin. In the movie, the main character sees someone who has killed many people who runs through the cabin. He eventually awakens again in a local hospital and is fully bandaged. His friend questions him about the murders and he realizes that he is the main suspect in the murders due to the fact that his fingerprints have been associated with the victims. Some would argue that this movie has some schizophrenic features.

15 Park Avenue (2005) – This is an English-Indian movie about a woman in her 30’s who suffers from schizophrenia and is taken care of by her older sister and mother. The woman suffering from schizophrenia ends up creating an alternate reality in her mind in which she marries her ex-fiancé and has kids. It is discussed that she lead a pretty normal life up until her early 20’s before a traumatic experience made her withdraw from the world – this lead to the development of schizophrenia.

Shabd (2005) – This is a Bollywood drama thriller about a man living a wealthy lifestyle in India with his wife. A man achieves much fame and success with his first book, but his subsequent works are not up to par with the first. He becomes depressed and begins writing a story about a real woman who he follows. The writer experiences such guilt for pursuing this woman that he develops schizophrenia and is sent to an asylum.

Proof (2005) – This is an American drama film featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins and Jake Gyllenhaal. It was based on the play “Proof” by David Auburn. In this film, a mathematician (Paltrow’s father) developed schizophrenia and she has to take care of him.

Stateside (2005) – This is a romantic drama movie based on a true story. The story is about an affluent guy serving in the Marine Corps to avoid being in jail who falls in love with an actress that has undiagnosed schizophrenia. The actress is living with undiagnosed schizophrenia and her concerts keep doing poorly as a result of her condition. The story is based on the life of actress Sarah Holcomb.

A Scanner Darkly (2006) – This is an animated science-fiction thriller starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Winona Ryder.  The movie is about a powerful drug called “Substance D” becoming popularized throughout the United States after the government has lost it’s “war on drugs.”  This drug causes people to experience bizarre hallucinations and people to experience drug-induced schizophrenia.

Bug (2006) – This was an American film based on a play of the same name about a woman believing the delusions of a schizophrenic man that she meets in an Oklahoma motel. The woman was unable to move on from the disappearance of her son and engaged in drugs and alcohol. She meets this drifter and ends up entering a relationship with him out of loneliness. He explains his delusions to her such as that he has been victim of U.S. Government testing. She believes his delusions and they end up lighting themselves on fire.

Canvas (2006) – This is a drama movie about a Florida family dealing with a mother who is dealing with schizophrenia. This movie received pretty decent, positive reviews – but never became widely popular.

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (2006) – This movie is based on the 1903 journal that was written by Daniel Paul Schreber. Schreber was a prominent German judge who became incarcerated in an insane asylum after a break with reality. He began experiencing delusions, believed he was communicating with God through a secret “nerve language.” He also had the desire to transform himself into a woman.

Danika (2006) – This is a horror movie about a woman suffering from very disturbing hallucinations with paranoia. Most of the hallucinations that she experiences contain threats to the safety of her family as well as media-influenced fears such as kidnappings, accidents, and terrorists. The woman ends up telling all of her thoughts to her husband and psychiatrist.

I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006) – This is a Korean romantic comedy that takes place in a mental institution. A young woman believes that she is a cyborg and is institutionalized after cutting her wrists. She experiences many delusions and utilizes electronics to attempt to fulfill her deluded thoughts that she is in fact a cyborg. Another man dealing with schizophrenia believes he can steal people’s souls.

Reprise (2006) – This is a Norwegian movie about successful writers and friends in their early 20’s. One is propelled to stardom, while the other’s work is rejected. The successful writer of the two ends up developing schizophrenia and is picked up by the other at a psychiatric hospital. Eventually the other non-schizophrenic writer finds his voice with the help of his idol.

Woh Lamhe (2006) – This is a movie based on Parveen Babi’s life including her personal struggles with schizophrenia and her relationship with Mahesh Bhatt. This was Bhatt’s tribute to Parveen for the time he was able to share with her. The title translates to “ Those Moments ” and is in regards to the quality moments he appreciated with her.  She is documented in the list of famous people with schizophrenia that was created.

Mr. Brooks (2007) – This movie is a psychological thriller starring Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, and Dane Cook. The movie is based on a successful Portland businessman and serial killer who is forced to take on Dane Cook’s character after being blackmailed. His life gets more complicated when a police officer reopens investigation into his past murders. Some would argue that the tendencies exhibited by the main character do not fully qualify as schizophrenia.

My Name Is Alan and I Paint Pictures (2007) – This is a documentary about Alan Russell-Cowan, a renowned street painter diagnosed with schizophrenia. The movie attempts to address major issues that influence the life of Alan. It includes the treatment and diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and highlights the therapeutic aspects of art for people with mental illness.

Savage Grace (2007) – This was a movie based on the book with the same title written by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson. The story is based on the relationship between a wealthy socialite and her son in which they engage in incest. The film is based on a true story of Barbara Daly Baekeland and her husband Brooks Baekeland with their only child Antony who ended up being diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Mirrors (2008) – This is a horror movie created to remake the Korean film “Into the Mirror.” The movie begins with a security officer entering a room from which he cannot escape – staring into a mirror. Another security guard attempts to figure out what is going on and during his investigation he discovers someone who suffered from schizophrenia. Most would consider this more of a horror film rather a depiction of schizophrenia.

The Soloist (2009) – This was a drama movie featuring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. It was based on the book “The Soloist” by Steve Lopez. It is based on the true life story of Nathaniel Ayers, a musician who developed schizophrenia and eventually became homeless as a result of his condition. Through the interaction of Foxx and Downey Jr. we find out more about Ayers’ story as a musical prodigy.

Karthik Calling Karthik (2010) – This movie is an Indian psychological thriller about an introverted guy with low self-esteem who is trapped in a job as a construction worker. He has had a troubled childhood and his brother died while trying to kill him in an unpredictable series of events. He eventually begins experiencing symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia accompanied by many delusions.

Shutter Island (2010) – Most people have seen this highly popular psychological thriller directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on Dennis Lehane’s book “Shutter Island” which was released in 2003. It features Leonardo DiCaprio playing a psychiatric patient on “Shutter Island” (located in Boston Harbor) with an institution for the criminally insane. DiCaprio’s character experiences many of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia including the delusion that he is being psychologically manipulated.

Take Shelter (2011) – This was a drama-thriller type movie in which a new husband (and dad) experiences a series of visions related to the apocalypse. He keeps the visions from his wife and their daughter. He focuses his efforts towards building a storm shelter in the backyard – but his odd behavior puts a strain on his familial relationship. His mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia – a condition which he eventually developed.

Sucker Punch (2011) – This is a fantasy action type movie about a young woman who attempts to escape an institution for the mentally ill before suffering a lobotomy. The storyline follows her fantasies as well as her escape plan. She was sent to the institution by an abusive step-dad and is blamed for the death of her younger sister. Basically her step-dad is setting her up and trying to make her mentally incapacitated for something she didn’t do.

Of Two Minds (2012) – This tells a story about a relationship between a girl and her younger sister who suffers from schizophrenia. After their mother dies, the older sister is responsible for taking care of the younger, mentally ill sister. After an incident happens between the younger sister and the older sister’s son, it becomes clear that she cannot handle her younger sister’s mental illness.

Do you know any other movies about schizophrenia?

Did I leave any movies off the list that may have been about schizophrenia? If you know of any other movies that could be classified as highlighting the mental illness that is schizophrenia, feel free to let me know in the comments section so I can add it to the list. Of the movies above, what are your favorites? Which ones do you think do the best job at depicting someone struggling with schizophrenia? Personally I really think the movie “A Beautiful Mind” does a fantastic job showcasing the signs and symptoms.

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78 thoughts on “all movies about schizophrenia: an extensive list”.

“Out Of Darkness” 1994 with Diana Ross.

Hi, I am trying to remember a movie from the 90s. I believe, about a medicine (?) student with schizophrenia (?). In the story, she doesn’t know if she saw a murder or if she hallucinated.

I have an old VHS, that I showed in the late 90s about a young man who had schizophrenia. The VHS is labeled “Danny” British Television, 1990. I cannot find it anywhere, not even a mention.

Not sure the year is correct, someone else labeled it. Trying to dub it to DVD, but the quality is likely abysmal by now.

Hey I’m looking for a movie that I saw within the last 5 years (2013-2018). The movie is about a man who I believe was diagnosed with Schizophrenia near the end but some of the things in the movie he did were:

-He is in a college or a library near the beginning and his friend is there talking to him, his friend is a tall blond haired man sitting in a chair (he isn’t actually there) and I believe near the end of that scene he ends up throwing a desk out the window.

-He puts mail in a mailbox labeled Top Secret multiple times throughout the movie but at the end it shows you that the mailbox isn’t even used and is attached to a run down building from a long time ago in his life.

-After taking medicine and finally being trusted with the safety of his daughter he is distracted by a hallucination of a man in the woods on a rainy day screaming for his help and almost drowns his daughter accidentally.

I’m sorry I do not know more but it has been a while. Thank you in advance if you know the movie I am talking about, I would love to own it.

Hi Dalton, The movie you are thinking of is “A Beautiful Mind”!

Hello, I’ve been trying really hard to find a TV Movie (Of The Week?), that came out in the 1980s or 1990s. All I remember is that it was about a girl who started to develop schizophrenia (?), or some other mental health issue(s), during university.

It carried on into her first job after school (which she managed to complete and get her degree in Computer Programming – I think?). The only scene from the movie I remember is that she had a can of soda with a straw in it and she held soda covering the tip of the straw, and put drops of soda in each letter of her computer keyboard, ruining it.

She denied doing this and I think she did it a second time and then ran out of there. At first, I thought it was either the movie “Strange Voices” with Nancy McKeon, or the 1995 movie; “Dare To Love”, but it’s not either of them having just watched both. The scene I just mentioned was not in either movie. Can anyone help me out please? Thx!

Hi, Deadly Delusions (2018) may fit in, however the end is not clear as the role of the Psychiatrist is implicating. I should understand it better when I view it again. Thank you for the movie titles.

The Voices starring Ryan Reynolds and Bubba Ho Tep starring Bruce Campbell.

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Mental Health Awareness

Mental Health Movies: The Visit

Disclaimer: this article may contain spoilers!

In the movie “ The Visit ”, mental illness is only used as a trope to fright a teen audience without displaying any hint of accuracy. The filmmakers did not take into account the cognitive impairments that come with severe psychiatric illnesses. 

The Plot 

In the film, you watch as two teenagers spend a week with their estranged grandparents whom they had never met before. Now, the grandparents – who work at a psychiatric hospital – want to get to know their grandchildren. The teens arrive at their grandparent’s rural home and start to notice their strange behavior. First, the grandmother is seen pacing around the house late at night vomiting. Later on, she is running then crawling around the house while giggling and growling. The grandfather explains her strange behavior by saying the grandmother has  Sundowners , a side effect of advanced Alzheimer’s where the darkness of the evening causes hallucinations and strange behavior. But, as time wears on, the grandfather starts to behave strangely as well. He attacks a man who he thinks is watching him. He is caught a few seconds away from committing suicide and admits to seeing a white apparition with yellow eyes follow him around. The grandmother’s behavior also becomes more intense as she almost strangles herself when she is caught having a hallucination, coaxes the granddaughter into the oven, and attempts to kill the children in their sleep when she discovers their video camera is recording her. Long story short, the children soon learn that those elderly people are not their grandparents, but rather are escaped patients from the psychiatric hospital who killed the real grandparents and assumed their identities. 

The Inaccuracy of Depicting Mental Illness & Its Stigma 

Not only does the movie show most of the details wrong about  schizophrenia  (the mental illness the two escaped patients are hinted at having), but it also pushed a fear of the “mentally ill” onto another generation. All the teenagers watching will think that those with schizophrenia will have murderous tendencies. If the filmmakers bothered to learn about mental illness before making this film, they would know that schizophrenia does not make you inherently dangerous and that odd behavior, hallucinations, and paranoia are not the most challenging symptoms of the disorder. The most debilitating part of schizophrenia is how it changes cognition. It can make it hard to concentrate for more than a few moments or remember things even if they just happened. Someone who is experiencing delusions and hallucinations at the level these two people in the movie are would not be able to organize their thoughts well enough to follow through with their murderous scheme then keep it up for almost a whole week. This movie adds onto the misconceptions of schizophrenia.

A few decades ago, it was new and exciting to have a horror movie killer be “psychotic” or “criminally insane”, but now it is just a used-up offensive cop out where real writing could have taken place. Instead of noticing how offensive this film might be to people with mental illness or have loved ones with mental illness, the director and writers were too focused on producing a scary movie with wrong depictions of mental illness. 

16 Best Schizophrenia Movies on Netflix (April 2024)

Mental health issues are something people are very ill-informed about or are awkward discussing. As a result, those living through it are sidelined, attacked, or left to deal with it alone. This lack of awareness and lack of conversation around mental health incapacitates the friends and family of those living through it and leaves them helpless. Mental health has not been a part of the mainstream conversation for decades, but things are finally changing. Books, TV shows, and movies have familiarized these topics and have opened up conversations around them. The following movies streaming on Netflix are centered around mental health or mental illness to further the conversation on the issue.

16. Strange Voices (1987)

This film captures the whole journey of a person with schizophrenia, from diagnosis to prognosis. It shows the struggles of a person coming to terms with the fact that they have the disorder. The film takes us through how the family goes from denial, resentment, and ultimately to acceptance of Nicole’s (Nancy McKeon) state of mental health. It also throws light upon the individual’s choice to accept or refuse treatment and what it means for them and those who care for them. It is a heart-wrenching journey towards acceptance as it tests patience, resilience, and presence of mind for those looking out for Nicole. The consequences of the treatment also put the focus on what are the ways in which mental health problems have been handled over the years and whether we still face similar dilemmas and concerns. You can watch the movie here .

15. Rakkhosh (2019)

Directed by Abhijit Kokate and Srivinay Salian, ‘Rakkhosh’ is a Hindi-language psychological thriller told completely from the first-person perspective of a man named Birsa (voiced by Namit Das) who is a mental patient at an asylum. He only has one friend, the mysterious Kumar John (Sanjay Mishra). The film reveals strange occurrences at the asylum, including the disappearance of inmates and a sinister entity addressed as ‘Rakkhosh’ (Bengali for monster), the investigation of the events by Birsa’s daughter Ridhima (Priyanka Bose), and Birsa’s shady past. How these three aspects are intertwined becomes the crux of the film. It can be streamed here .

14. Brain on Fire (2017)

Susannah is an upcoming  journalist who seems to be doing really well in her career. But one day, she’s suddenly traumatized by voices in her head and serious seizures that start driving her insane. As time passes by, her symptoms get even worse, and Susannah drifts deeper and deeper into insanity. She visits many doctors and waits for hours in hospitals, but most doctors are not able to figure out what’s wrong with her and even misdiagnose her condition. After all of this chaos and hassle, she finally finds a doctor who might have the answer to her problems and might just be her light at the end of the tunnel. It’s heartbreaking to see such a young girl with her whole life ahead of her suffering from such an illness. But it is inspiring to see her fight back and recover, and her journey gives hope to all of us. Feel free to check out the movie here .

13. To the Bone (2017)

‘To the Bone’ revolves around the life of a 20-year-old girl, Ellen, who suffers from anorexia . What looks more like a physical condition, anorexia is actually a mental disorder that can even end lives. Ellen spends most of her teenage years moving from one recovery program to another, but none of it seems to work out for her. She finally comes across a youth home that adopts unconventional methods for helping people who suffer from this. Even the rules in this facility come as a surprise to Ellen , and now she must finally find a way to deal with her eating disorder and also accept herself the way she is. The movie can only give a glimpse of the problem in its short span, but it makes you realize what people around you could be going through, which is enough. You can check out the film here .

12. Clinical (2017)

‘Clinical’ is a horror-thriller strictly for entertainment only. It tells the story of a psychiatrist who is violently attacked by one of her female patients. This really traumatizes her, and to recover from this, she tries to distract herself by completely engrossing herself in helping out her new patient. But as soon as the man who is her new patient starts to trace back his own story, things get even worse for the psychologist as he may have some relations with the previous scarring incident. You can watch ‘Clinical’ here .

11. God’s Crooked Lines (2022)

‘God’s Crooked Lines’ is a Spanish psychological thriller (Spanish: Los renglones torcidos de Dios) directed by Oriol Paulo and is based on the 1979 novel of the same name by Torcuato Luca de Tena. The story centers on Alice Gould, a private investigator who feigns paranoia to check into a psychiatric hospital. This is a part of her investigation into the mysterious death of one of its inmates. But as days pass at the hospital, she is subjected to an environment that makes her question her own sanity. The cast of ‘God’s Crooked Lines’ includes Bárbara Lennie as Alice, along with Loreto Mauleón, Samuel Soler, Federico Aguado, Eduard Fernández, Pablo Derqui, and Francisco Javier Pastor. You may watch the movie here .

10. Horse Girl (2020)

This film is about a young woman rapidly slipping into a deep psychological pit as she is unable to distinguish between reality and her memories or imagination. She is unaware of what she does when she experiences a lapse in time and space. Given the history of mental illness in her family, she is finally admitted to a psychological facility. Directed by Jeff Baena and co-written by Alison Brie (who also plays the protagonist, Sarah), the story is based on Brie’s own experiences of mental illness in her family, especially paranoid schizophrenia and depression. In her interview with Deadline , Allison Brie tries to bring out “how terrifying it is not to be able to trust your own mind.” You may watch ‘Horse Girl’ here .

9. 6 Balloons (2018)

Starring Dave Franco , ‘6 Balloons’ is about how a woman discovers her brother’s relapsed heroin addiction. She leaves with him and her two-year-old daughter in a car late at night to look for a detox center. This film can get a little boring at times, but what makes it worth your time is that it is based on true events, and the actors make sure that you get a very realistic feel out of it. Initially, the movie touches your heart with its warm dialogues , but later, the story starts to take a very dark, horrifying turn, which will stick with you even after the movie ends and make you think before you try out heroin yourself. You can stream the film here .

Read More: Best Survival Movies on Netflix

8. Fractured (2019)

Starring Sam Worthington (as Ray Monroe) and Lily Rabe (as Joanne Monroe), this psychological thriller keeps us at the edge of our seats, and everything comes together only at the end. Driving back from a Thanksgiving dinner, tragedy strikes the Monroe family as their daughter is badly injured. Ray and Joanne quickly rush to the nearest hospital only to get separated, which pushes Ray into paranoia as the hospital staff denies admitting his wife and daughter. This film leaves us with an enormous sense of awe and disbelief at what the human mind is capable of when faced with tragedy. The mind does what it does to protect itself from trauma. You can stream ‘Fractured’ here . 

Read More: Best Vampire Movies on Netflix

7. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

As is typical of Charlie Kaufman ’s style, ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ is a film that demands attention as the storyline is not a linear one. A lot of dynamic factors, including the identities of the characters, their history, and their experiences, make the viewers evaluate their perception of the story. Just like the characters in the film, we start to question everything. Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley have done a phenomenal job as Jake and the young woman (Lucy, Louisa, Lucia, and Ames), respectively.

The story is about a young couple making a trip to meet Jake’s parents and everything else that happens in between. But suspicion and self-doubt slip in early for the young woman as well as the viewers. Intricately made, the film makes an effort to keep up with what is imagined and what is happening. You can stream it here .

6. Hypnotic (2021)

Directed by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, ‘ Hypnotic ’ follows Jenn Tompson (Kate Siegel), a computer engineer who feels that her life has become stagnant. She recently ended her relationship with her longtime boyfriend and hasn’t achieved anything significant in her professional life either. After meeting Dr. Collin Meade (Jason O’Mara) at a housewarming party for one of his patients, Jenn becomes intrigued and goes in for a session with him. Meade places her under hypnosis for an hour, and when Jenn regains her senses, she discovers that she feels freer and happier than she has in months. However, she soon realizes that Meade doesn’t have her best interests in mind when she starts losing hours in a day and terrible things begin to happen to her friends and family. You can watch the movie here .

5. Pieces of a Woman (2020)

In Kornél Mundruczó’s ‘ Pieces of a Woman ,’ Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Sean ( Shia LaBeouf ) are a young Boston couple who are about to have a child together. Sean isn’t particularly fond of Martha’s mother, and that feeling is mutual. Martha has decided to have a home birth, but as the midwife they initially hired is unavailable, another named Eva is sent in her stead. After the birth, the baby girl initially seems healthy but later turns blue and passes away despite Eva’s attempt to revive her. Both Sean and Martha subsequently descend into severe depression, unable to deal with the overwhelming grief. The couple decides to sue Eva, which effectively forces them to relive their trauma. You may watch the film here to find out what happens then.

4. Karthik Calling Karthik (2010)

Directed by Vijay Lalwani, ‘Karthik Calling Karthik’ is an Indian Hindi film that revolves around a guy named Karthik who is a bullied intelligent employee and is secretly in love with his co-worker Shonali Mukherjee, who is dating another guy. One day, he gets himself a new telephone, and the following morning, he starts getting a call from a guy who sounds just like him. The guy assures him that if he listens to whatever this guy says without telling anyone about these calls, he will achieve success. Eventually, he does get a promotion and gets to be with Shonali. However, upon telling Sonali about calls and consulting a psychiatrist, a shocking truth reveals itself. A true-to-from psychological drama, ‘Karthik Calling Karthik’ serves as a great watch for those looking for something serious. The cast includes Farhan Akhtar as Karthik and Deepika Padukone as Shonali, Shefali Shah, Ram Kapoor, Vipin Sharma, Brijendra Kala, and Tarana Raja. Feel free to check out the movie here .

3. Gerald’s Game (2017)

‘Gerald’s Game’ follows Jessie and Gerald Burlingame, a couple facing numerous marriage issues. In a last-ditch effort to save their relationship, they travel to a remote cabin where Gerald handcuffs his wife to the bed, hoping to engage in some steamy foreplay. However, Gerald suffers a tragic heart attack in the middle of the foreplay and dies on the spot, leaving Jessie cuffed to the bed with no help nearby. With no food and constant terror in her mind, Jesse’s reality keeps warping around her, and she even begins hallucinating as the tiredness sets in. As the plot progresses, the line separating reality from hallucination fades as Jesse is dragged into the confines of her exhausted mind. You can check out the film here .

2. Blonde (2022)

Writer-director Andrew Dominik’s ‘ Blonde ’ isn’t for everyone. It places the celebrity culture, Hollywood, and social elites under a microscope, underscoring their faults and shortcomings for everyone to see. It is also a film that seeks to exploit its main character — one of the most iconic stars Hollywood has ever produced, the one and only Marilyn Monroe, played brilliantly by Ana de Armas. As a result, ‘Blonde’ is effectively what it critiques. The film follows Marilyn through various stages of her career. It begins when the actress was still known as Norma Jeane Mortenson, showing the abuses she endured, her tumultuous relationships with the men in her life, and her eventual death in an overdose. ‘Blonde’ divided critics and audiences alike, but it’s undeniable that it’s a well-acted and well-crafted film. You can watch it here .

1. The Woman in the Window (2021)

‘ The Woman in the Window ’ follows Child psychologist Anna Fox ( Amy Adams ), who lives alone in a Manhattan brownstone after her marriage to her husband fell apart. Their child lives with the said husband. Anna has a drinking problem and suffers from agoraphobia, spending hours every day watching her neighbors through her windows. One day, she witnesses the murder of one of those neighbors, Jane Russell. However, when she reaches out to the authorities with this information, they ignore her and assert that no one in the Russell family is hurt. When Anna sees the Russells again, she is stunned to discover that this isn’t the woman she met earlier. As she starts to question her sanity, Anna realizes that her medications have caused her hallucinations. You can stream the film here .

Read More: Best Teen Movies on Netflix

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Horror movies perpetuate mental illness stigma

Some horror movies paint people with mental illness as dangerous and violent for entertainment.

A popular horror movie of 2016 was “Split,” directed by M. Night Shylamalan, which focused on a man living with dissociative identity disorder who abducts three girls. 

The film takes aspects of the mental condition, like having multiple distinct personalities taking control of the individual, and uses these symptoms to make the viewer terrified of the main character, the Verge, a technology news site, reported.

This portrayal of DID was met with backlash from mental health experts because it demonizes people with mental illness and incorrectly portrays the disorder to the public, who are likely to be uneducated on the realities of DID, CNN reported.

The movie might be entertaining, but using mental illness as a ploy to sell movie tickets is exploitative. Movies that characterize their villains as having mental illnesses associate the illness with something threatening, which perpetuates damaging stereotypes about those with these conditions.

Horror movies are a significant part of Halloween, and with the holiday around the corner, it’s important to recognize the negative stigma about mental illnesses perpetuated in films during this season.

“A lot of people have a lot of perceptions about what mental illness looks like, but it’s not what the actual truth is,” said Rebecca Siegel, a school psychology Ph.D. student who teaches a course called “The Meaning of Madness.” 

Siegel also described how movies like “Split” reinforces the stigma about mental illness.

“It dramatizes it, and it creates the idea that people who have a mental illness are something scary and a thing that we should be afraid of,” Siegel said.

The problem doesn’t stop with dissociative identity disorder. 

The 2011 film “The Roommate” features a violent, terrifying villain with bipolar disorder, perpetuating negative stigma about those suffering from this condition, the Huffington Post reported.

The 2015 film “The Visit,” also directed by Shylamalan, is listed as the worst depiction of mental illness in any movie by the mental health advocacy organization Resources to Recovery. The film’s villains, who have schizophrenia, appear frightening and monstrous to terrify audiences.

Depicting characters with mental illnesses as overly violent and dangerous is stigmatizing because mass media, like movies, is the dominant way most people are introduced to mental illnesses, according to the U.S. News and World Report.

People with mental illnesses are responsible for a very small amount of crimes, according to a 2015 study in the Journal and Epidemiology and Community Health, and movies that feature overly violent characters with mental illnesses send an inaccurate message about those conditions.

This portrayal of people with mental illness is irresponsible because those with these conditions have historically been criminalized, isolated and abused in some former asylums.

Pennhurst Asylum, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, was one of those asylums. 

Pennhurst started as a state school and hospital for the mentally ill, but it was exposed in the 1960s for neglecting and abusing its patients. Pennhurst was named the “Shame of Pennsylvania” for the abusive practices that took place there and was closed in 1987. 

Twenty-five years after its closing, Pennhurst reopened for business — not as a hospital, but as a haunted attraction. Once the sight of torture, abuse and inhumane treatment toward the mentally ill, Pennhurst is now utilized to make money off of a Halloween gimmick.

In the same way horror movies have exploited mental illness, so have former asylums, like Pennhurst.

“Any time you have a mass murderer or a psycho killer, you have hints of demeaning imagery toward mental illness,” said Jim Conroy, co-president of Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance.

Even though horror movies may seem harmless, the stigma and stereotypes that they sometimes perpetuate can seriously hurt. 

“I don’t think the stigma is isolated to the Halloween season. That may be when folks make different choices around costumes or the media that they consume, but that media and that language is really used quite frequently, like when people describe things as ‘crazy’ when they really mean incredible, unbelievable, or unusual,” said Liz Zadnick, the assistant director of the Wellness Resource Center.

Mental illness is not a joke or a tool for entertainment, it is a serious thing hurting people every day.

Meaghan Burke

can be reached at [email protected]. Or you can follow Meaghan on Twitter @meaghanburke61 . Follow The Temple News @TheTempleNews .

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Entertainment

'The Visit's Grandparents Are Seriously Twisted

The new horror film The Visit , from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, deals with the most classic of horror movie villains: grandparents. Yes, senior citizens provide the scares in this film, said to be Shyamalan's scariest yet, and anyone who has seen the trailer for The Visit knows how creepy these geriatrics can be. In the movie, two kids head out to the country to stay with their grandparents, whom they've never met, for a week. Everything is fine initially, but then their relatives impose a bedtime of 9:30 p.m. and warn the kids not to come out of their room at that time. Of course, they do, and they find their grandparents scratching the walls, making bizarre noises, and running around all possessed-like. You know, typical grandparent stuff. It's disturbing behavior for sure, so you're probably wondering: what's wrong with the grandparents in The Visit ? Spoilers to follow!

Toward the end of The Visit , the kids discover that the elderly couple with whom they're staying are not actually their grandparents . Instead, they are two escaped mental patients who murdered their actual grandparents and took their place. The kids discover the truth after finding their real grandparents' corpses and mental institution uniforms in the basement of the house. It's a twist ending for sure, since for awhile, it seems there may be a supernatural explanation for what's going on, but anyone familiar with Shyamalan's work shouldn't be too surprised. The director has a reputation for his movies' twist endings , so here are the other times he's pulled the rug out from under fans. Again, spoilers ahead.

The Sixth Sense

Shyamalan's first and best-known twist comes from this Oscar-nominated film where Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. You obviously already knew that because everyone knows that , so I'm moving on to the next movie.

Unbreakable

Expectations were high for Shyamalan's first film after The Sixth Sense , and Unbreakable didn't disappoint. Bruce Willis returns, this time as David, a seemingly ordinary man who discovers he has superhuman powers with the help of comic shop owner Elijah (Samuel L. Jackson). The twist comes when David uncovers that Elijah is in actuality a villain, and has killed countless people in his quest to find David, whom he believes to be, as title suggests, unbreakable. Like The Sixth Sense , this is a movie where the twist was totally justified and in many ways, it made the film.

This alien invasion thriller, starring Mel Gibson as minister Graham Hess, was the first of Shyamalan's films where the twist felt a little forced. The director clearly knew he had a reputation to live up to with his ending, but the twist here ended up being the most criticized aspect of the film. Throughout the movie, Hess's daughter leaves glasses of water all around her house. Concurrently, Hess often recites his dying wife's last words to him, "Tell Merrill (Graham's brother) to swing away." Both of these plot points come into play at the end of the film, when they learn the aliens' weakness is water. Since they happen to have plenty of just that lying around the house, Merrill "swings away" with a baseball bat to knock glasses of water into the aliens. The buildup was great, though, and the twist didn't really take away anything from the movie — it just felt a little shoehorned in.

The Village

Speaking of twists taking away something from a movie. I'm not gonna lie, The Village remains the most disappointed I've ever been in a movie theater. I was a big Shyamalan fan and was super excited for The Village , but the twist left me feeling cheated. The entire movie takes place in a 19th century village surrounded by woods, woods that are stalked by supernatural monsters that won't let the villagers leave. Sounds cool, right? And it was... right up until the end when viewers learn that the village actually existed in a patch of woods in modern times and was created to shield themselves from the scary modern world. Oh, and the monsters are fake. The ending negated all of the suspense and drama the film had produced and gave critics and audiences alike the impression that Shyamalan was more interested in pulling one over on filmgoers than entertaining them.

The Happening

Possibly Shyamalan's worst reviewed film (17 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), The Happening features a toxin in the air that's causing mass suicides. Scary stuff. Then the twist comes: Plants are releasing the toxin to kill humans as a means of self defense. That's right, plants. This results in a lot of Mark Wahlberg running from the wind and trying to reason with plants, which is as funny as it sounds. The twist happens much earlier in this film than in Shyamalan's other offerings, but in this case he may have been better served saving it for the end.

As you can see, Shyamalan has had varied success with the twists he inserts into his films, and it's not clear yet how fans will react to the twist in The Visit . But hey, whatever the reception is, at least the grandparents aren't plants!

Images: Universal Pictures

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Schizophrenia

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Improve your engagement and support for individuals with schizophrenia with the guidance of NAMI’s Schizophrenia and Psychosis Lexicon Guide. This resource merges professional insights with lived experiences to recommend language that conveys respect, understanding, and support. Essential for anyone communicating about schizophrenia, this guide is a step towards more effective and empathetic conversations. Enhance your communication— download the guide today .

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, manage emotions, make decisions and relate to others. It is a complex, long-term medical illness. The exact prevalence of schizophrenia is difficult to measure, but estimates range from  0.25% to 0.64%  of U.S. adults. Although schizophrenia can occur at any age, the average age of onset tends to be in the late teens to the early 20s for men, and the late 20s to early 30s for women. It is uncommon for schizophrenia to be diagnosed in a person younger than 12 or older than 40. It is possible to live well with schizophrenia.

It can be difficult to diagnose schizophrenia in teens. This is because the first signs can include a change of friends, a drop in grades, sleep problems, and irritability—common and nonspecific adolescent behavior. Other factors include isolating oneself and withdrawing from others, an increase in unusual thoughts and suspicions, and a family history of psychosis. In young people who develop schizophrenia, this stage of the disorder is called the “prodromal” period.

With any condition, it’s essential to get a comprehensive medical evaluation in order to obtain the best diagnosis. For a diagnosis of schizophrenia, some of the following symptoms are present in the context of reduced functioning for a least 6 months:

Hallucinations.  These include a person hearing voices, seeing things, or smelling things others can’t perceive. The hallucination is very real to the person experiencing it, and it may be very confusing for a loved one to witness. The voices in the hallucination can be critical or threatening. Voices may involve people that are known or unknown to the person hearing them.

Delusions.  These are false beliefs that don’t change even when the person who holds them is presented with new ideas or facts. People who have delusions often also have problems concentrating, confused thinking, or the sense that their thoughts are blocked.

Negative symptoms  are ones that diminish a person’s abilities. Negative symptoms often include being emotionally flat or speaking in a dull, disconnected way. People with the negative symptoms may be unable to start or follow through with activities, show little interest in life, or sustain relationships. Negative symptoms are sometimes confused with clinical depression.

Cognitive issues/disorganized thinking . People with the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia often struggle to remember things, organize their thoughts or complete tasks. Commonly, people with schizophrenia have  anosognosia   or “lack of insight.” This means the person is unaware that he has the illness, which can make treating or working with him much more challenging.

Research suggests that schizophrenia may have several possible causes:

• Genetics . Schizophrenia isn’t caused by just one genetic variation, but a complex interplay of genetics and environmental influences. Heredity does play a strong role—your likelihood of developing schizophrenia is more than  six times  higher if you have a close relative, such as a parent or sibling, with the disorder
• Environment.  Exposure to viruses or malnutrition before birth, particularly in the first and second trimesters has been shown to increase the risk of schizophrenia. Recent research also suggests a relationship between autoimmune disorders and the development of psychosis.
• Brain chemistry.  Problems with certain brain chemicals, including neurotransmitters called dopamine and glutamate, may contribute to schizophrenia. Neurotransmitters allow brain cells to communicate with each other. Networks of neurons are likely involved as well.
• Substance use.  Some studies have suggested that taking mind-altering drugs during teen years and young adulthood can increase the risk of schizophrenia. A growing body of evidence indicates that smoking marijuana increases the risk of psychotic incidents and the risk of ongoing psychotic experiences. The younger and more frequent the use, the greater the risk.

Diagnosing schizophrenia is not easy. Sometimes using drugs, such as methamphetamines or LSD, can cause a person to have schizophrenia-like symptoms. The difficulty of diagnosing this illness is compounded by the fact that many people who are diagnosed do not believe they have it. Lack of awareness is a common symptom of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and greatly complicates treatment.

While there is no single physical or lab test that can diagnosis schizophrenia, a health care provider who evaluates the symptoms and the course of a person’s illness over six months can help ensure a correct diagnosis. The health care provider must rule out other factors such as brain tumors, possible medical conditions and other psychiatric diagnoses, such as bipolar disorder.

To be diagnosed with schizophrenia, a person must have two or more of the following symptoms occurring persistently in the context of reduced functioning:

• Hallucinations
• Disorganized speech
• Disorganized or catatonic behavior
• Negative symptoms

Delusions or hallucinations alone can often be enough to lead to a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Identifying it as early as possible greatly improves a person’s chances of managing the illness, reducing psychotic episodes, and recovering. People who receive good care during their first psychotic episode are admitted to the hospital less often, and may require less time to control symptoms than those who don’t receive immediate help. The literature on the role of medicines early in treatment is evolving, but we do know that psychotherapy is essential.

People can describe symptoms in a variety of ways. How a person describes symptoms often depends on the cultural lens she is looking through. African Americans and Latinos are more likely to be misdiagnosed, potentially due to differing cultural perspectives or structural barriers. Any person who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia should try to work with a health care professional that understands his or her cultural background and shares the same expectations for treatment.

There is no cure for schizophrenia, but it can be treated and managed in several ways.

• Antipsychotic medications
• Psychotherapy , such as cognitive behavioral therapy and assertive community treatment and supportive therapy
• Self-management strategies and education

Related Conditions

People with schizophrenia may have additional illnesses. These may include:

• Substance use disorders/  Dual Diagnosis
• Posttraumatic stress disorder  (PTSD)
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder  (OCD)
• Major depressive disorder

Successfully treating schizohprenia almost always improves these related illnesses. And successful treatment of substance misuse, PTSD or OCD usually improves the symptoms of schizophrenia.

With  medication ,  psychosocial rehabilitation , and family support, the symptoms of schizophrenia can be reduced. People with schizophrenia should get treatment as soon as the illness starts showing, because early detection can reduce the severity of their symptoms.

Recovery while living with schizophrenia is often seen over time, and involves a variety of factors including self-learning, peer support, school and work and finding the right supports and treatment.

Typically, a health care provider will prescribe antipsychotics to relieve symptoms of psychosis, such as delusions and hallucinations. Due to lack of awareness of having an illness and the serious side effects of medication used to treat schizophrenia, people who have been prescribed them are often hesitant to take them.

First Generation (Typical) Antipsychotics

These medications can cause serious movement problems that can be short (dystonia) or long term (called tardive dyskinesia), and also muscle stiffness. Other side effects can also occur.

• Chlorpromazine (Thorazine)
• Fluphenazine  (Proxlixin)
• Haloperidol  (Haldol)
• Loxapine  (Loxitane)
• Perphenazine (Trilafon)
• Thiothixene (Navane)
• Trifluoperazine (Stelazine)

Second Generation (Atypical) Antipsychotics

These medications are called atypical because they are less likely to block dopamine and cause movement disorders. They do, however, increase the risk of weight gain and diabetes. Changes in nutrition and exercise, and possibly medication intervention, can help address these side effects.

• Aripiprazole  (Abilify)
• Asenapine  (Saphris)
• Clozapine  (Clozaril)
• Iloperidone  (Fanapt)
• Lurasidone  (Latuda)
• Olanzapine  (Zyprexa)
• Paliperidone  (Invega)
• Risperidone  (Risperdal)
• Quetiapine  (Seroquel)
• Ziprasidone  (Geodon)

One unique second generation antipsychotic medication is called  clozapine . It is the only FDA approved antipsychotic medication for the treatment of refractory schizophrenia and has been the only one indicated to reduce thoughts of suicide. However, it does have multiple medical risks in addition to these benefits.

Psychotherapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy  (CBT) is an effective treatment for some people with affective disorders. With more serious conditions, including those with psychosis, additional cognitive therapy is added to basic CBT (CBTp). CBTp helps people develop coping strategies for persistent symptoms that do not respond to medicine.

Supportive psychotherapy  is used to help a person process his experience and to support him in coping while living with schizophrenia. It is not designed to uncover childhood experiences or activate traumatic experiences, but is rather focused on the here and now.

Cognitive Enhancement Therapy (CET)  works to promote cognitive functioning and confidence in one’s cognitive ability. CET involves a combination of computer based brain training and group sessions. This is an active area of research in the field at this time.

Psychosocial Treatments

People who engage in therapeutic interventions often see improvement, and experience greater mental stability. Psychosocial treatments enable people to compensate for or eliminate the barriers caused by their schizophrenia and learn to live successfully. If a person participates in psychosocial rehabilitation, she is more likely to continue taking their medication and less likely to relapse. Some of the more common psychosocial treatments include:

• Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) provides comprehensive treatment for people with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. Unlike other community-based programs that connect people with mental health or other services, ACT provides highly individualized services directly to people with mental illness. Professionals work with people with schizophrenia and help them meet the challenges of daily life. ACT professionals also address problems proactively, prevent crises, and ensure medications are taken.
• Peer support groups  like NAMI  Peer-to-Peer  encourage people’s involvement in their recovery by helping them work on social skills with others.

Complementary Health Approaches

Complementary and alternative health approaches  including acupuncture, meditation, and nutrition interventions can be part of a comprehensive treatment plan. For example, Omega-3 fatty acids, commonly found in fish oil, have shown some promise for treating and managing schizophrenia. Some researchers believe that omega-3 may help treat mental illness because of its ability to help replenish neurons and connections in affected areas of the brain.

Additional Concerns

Physical Health.  People with schizophrenia are subject to many medical risks, including diabetes and cardiovascular problems, and also smoking and lung disease. For this reason, coordinated and active attention to medical risks is essential.

Substance Use.  People with schizophrenia are at an increased risk for misusing drugs or alcohol. Substance use can make the treatments for schizophrenia less effective, make people less likely to follow their treatment plans, and even worsen their symptoms.

• Neuroplasticity III: Trusting Myself after Psychosis & Jail
• How My Relationships with My Caregivers Has Helped Me Navigate Schizoaffective Disorder

Coping with schizophrenia isn’t easy. But if you or a family member or friend is struggling, there is help. NAMI and NAMI Affiliates are here to provide you with support for you and your family and information about community resources. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or  [email protected]  if you have any questions about schizophrenia or finding support and resources.

Helping Yourself

If you have schizophrenia, the condition can exert control over your thoughts, interfere with functioning and if not treated, lead to a crisis. Here are some ways to help manage your illness.

• Manage Stress.  Stress can trigger psychosis and make the symptoms of schizophrenia worse, so keeping it under control is extremely important. Know your limits, both at home and at work or school. Don’t take on more than you can handle and take time to yourself if you’re feeling overwhelmed.
• Try to get plenty of sleep.  When you’re on medication, you most likely need even more sleep than the standard eight hours. Many people with schizophrenia have trouble with sleep, but lifestyle changes such as getting regular exercise and avoiding caffeine can help.
• Avoid alcohol and drugs.  Substance use affects the benefits of medication and worsens symptoms. If you have a substance use problem, seek help.
• Maintain connections.  Having friends and family involved in your treatment plan can go a long way towards recovery. People living with schizophrenia often have a difficult time in social situations, so surrounding yourself with people who understand this can make the transition back into daily social life smoother. If you feel you can, consider joining a schizophrenia support group or getting involved with a local church, club, or other organization.

If you live with a mental health condition, learn more about  managing your mental health and finding the support you need .

Helping A Family Member Or Friend

Learning about psychosis and schizophrenia will help you understand what your friend or family member is experiencing and trying to cope with. Living with schizophrenia is challenging. Here are some ways you can show support:

• Respond calmly.  To your loved one, the hallucinations seem real, so it doesn’t help to say they are imaginary. Calmly explain that you see things differently. Being respectful without tolerating dangerous or inappropriate behavior.
• Pay attention to triggers . You can help your family member or friend understand, and try to avoid, the situations that trigger his or her symptoms or cause a relapse or disrupt normal activities.
• Help ensure medications are taken as prescribed . Many people question whether they still need the medication when they’re feeling better, or if they don’t like the side effects. Encourage your loved one to take his or her medication regularly to prevent symptoms from coming back or getting worse.
• Understanding lack of awareness (anosognosia) . Your family member or friend one may be unable to see that he or she has schizophrenia. Rather than trying to convince the person he or she has schizophrenia, you can show support by helping him or her be safe, get therapy, and take the prescribed medications.
• Help avoid drugs or alcohol . These substances are known to worsen schizophrenia symptoms and trigger psychosis. If your loved one develops a substance use disorder, getting help is essential.

Find out more  about taking care of your family member or friend and yourself.

• Power of Connection: Co-facilitating a NAMI Support Group

Know the warning signs of mental illness

Learn more about common mental health conditions

NAMI HelpLine is available M-F, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. ET. Call 800-950-6264 , text “helpline” to 62640 , or chat online. In a crisis, call or text 988 (24/7).

MONDAY MORNING

We meet Tyler, Becca’s brother, while they drive to Philadelphia's 30th street station. He is 13 and talks like a wannabe rapper, complaining that he’s got three girls on deck and is upset he won’t be able to text all week. Their mom hugs goodbye at Grand Central, and they board a train. On board, Tyler shows off his free-styling skills by rapping for the camera. Becca mentions that she agreed to the trip because their mom hasn’t been able to connect with her new boyfriend, and a five-day cruise might help them get closer.

NANA & POP-POP are waiting at the train station with a sign, "Becca & Tyler." As they get off the train, they see the sign and go straight up to them. The grandparents seem friendly enough and take them back to their large house. Tyler does a freestyle rap using Nana’s suggestion of “pineapple upside down cake.” Becca discusses her documentary and her love of making movies.

Tyler and Becca get settled into their room upstairs, which used to be their mother’s. They play rock, paper, scissors to see who gets the bed and who gets the sofa… and Becca gets the bed. She tells Tyler about the old time song she’s going to play over some of the footage when there’s a happy conclusion to the week. She gives Tyler a second camera so he can film additional footage.

Tyler films Pop-Pop mysteriously working in the shed. He calls out to him and Pop-Pop sees him but doesn’t respond.

Tyler coerces Becca to play Hide and Seek underneath the house. They crawl around and then suddenly Nana is down on all fours behind Tyler. She races after him and then Becca, each scurrying to get away from her as she seems demented and “off,” repeating “I’m going to get you” as she scurries after the kids. They escape from underneath the house, and Nana laughs, her hands sullied, seemingly aware of the game and simply trying to participate. She walks away, revealing the roughhousing has caused her dress to ride upwards, exposing her bare butt.

A man comes to the door and asks to talk to their grandparents. They tell him they’re not there. He says he knows them from Meadow Shade, the hospital they volunteer at a few days a week, and he has some gossip to tell them about the latest drama going on down there.

Tyler decides he’s going to investigate what’s in the shed. He sneaks inside and says it smells like ass. He finds in the corner a pile. He gets closer to see what it is and discovers it’s used adult diapers. He runs out screaming. Inside, Nana explains to him that Pop-Pop is incontinent, and a lot of adults have to wear diapers. He hides them in the shed because he’s ashamed. She then continues giving Becca tips on how to make cookies.

That night, Pop-Pop comes into their room and tells them that there is mold in the basement, and they should not go down there. He also tells them that everyone follows the same schedule, so lights have to be out at 9:30. They agree but are annoyed, especially since there is no WiFi, and they can’t use any electronics. Tyler decides to start using pop star’s names instead of misogynistic terms in his raps and says if he stubs his toe, it sounds cooler to shout out “Shakira!” than a cuss word (This is a motif that is carried out throughout the movie with him shouting out “Sarah McLachlan” and “Katy Perry” in times of annoyance or danger). The two can’t sleep, and it’s now 10:23 PM. Becca says she’s going to sneak out to get one of Nana’s cookies. She opens the door and sees Nana walking in the dark, projectile vomiting. She quickly shuts the door.

TUESDAY MORNING

The next morning, Pop-Pop and Nana are outside with breakfast on the table. Nana apologizes because she’s got hot oil all over Becca’s computer but really only the webcam. Becca says she will probably be able to scrub it off with enough effort. The kids later ask Pop-Pop if Nana is sick. They are told Nana experiences something called sundowning, which is a form of dementia that happens when the sun sets. It’s the equivalent of talking in one’s sleep and not to be concerned, but it’s best for them to stay in their room. He says Nana is convinced there are bad things inside her, so she throws up to get rid of them. As he’s explaining this, he’s putting on a tuxedo. They ask him if he’s going somewhere, and he tells them there’s a costume ball at the train station he’s late to. He then realizes that he’s confused and takes the tuxedo off.

Pop-Pop takes Becca and Tyler through the town. They play a game where they make up stories about people who live in the buildings – including the closed police station. When they try to make up a story about a tall building, Pop-Pop tells them it’s Meadow Shade where they volunteer, and he’ll show it to them when he gets his Meadow Shade badge from home. They go to the park to play, but Pop-Pop tells them they have to leave because they’re being followed. The kids see a man across the street using his cell phone, not paying attention to the three of them. Pop-Pop runs over and begins to accost the man, yelling at him. Becca and Tyler convince him to leave the man alone, and Pop-Pop apologizes to them.

Back home, Becca is in the kitchen with Nana. She asks her if she can interview her, but Nana does not want to be on camera. Instead, she asks for Becca’s help cleaning the oven. Becca cleans with just her arm, but Nana tells her to lean into it. Nana then convinces her to get completely inside. While she’s fully submerged in the oven, Nana bounces up and down excitedly. Becca reappears, and Nana tells her she is ready to be in her movie.

Becca interviews Nana by asking her warm-up questions. When she asks Nana what happened 15 years ago to cause her not to speak to her daughter, Nana starts going berserk, shaking violently, and screams that she no longer wants to be in Becca’s movie.

Outside, Tyler interviews Becca asking what animal she’d want to be (“a dolphin”), then why she likes the pizza guy despite him having bad acne (“he has kind eyes.”) Then he asks her why she can’t look at herself in the mirror, pointing out when she brushes her hair, she does it with her back to the mirror. And when she brushes her teeth, she looks down. She hints that it’s because their dad abandoned the three of them years ago, and she has felt rejected. Tyler defends his dad, saying there was a time when he was eight when he was playing peewee football. His team was up by three, and it was the fourth quarter and they were set to win as long as nobody scored in the final minutes. A big kid came running towards him but instead of blocking him, he just froze. Everyone started screaming at him but he was completely frozen, immobile, which is what happens when he’s afraid. But his dad never judged him for it. But he sometimes blames that for being why his dad went away.

In the editing software, she’s piecing together on her computer, Becca films herself in front of an obstructed slideshow of pictures of her brother, her, and their father. She says that while she’s trying to tell the story of her mom’s parents, she will not be including anybody from the past that she doesn’t consider worthy of acknowledgment.

That night, at 10:47 PM, they hear a scary sound coming outside their locked door. The two want to film what’s on the other side, so Tyler tells Becca to open the door. She refuses. He then says if she holds the camera, he’ll open the door. He does, and they reveal a naked Nana clawing at the door opposite them, scratching like a frantic dog. He shuts the door and declares that he’s now partially blind.

WEDNESDAY MORNING

The next morning, Becca interviews Pop-Pop, and he tells her how he used to have a great job, but he used to see a white figure with yellow eyes at his job. Nobody else could see it, but he was insistent it was there. So he was eventually fired. He warns Becca that she, too, will see the white figure with yellow eyes one day. She tells him he seems sad.

Tyler tries to convince Becca to set the camera up in the living room so it can film what happens at night. She says she can’t film their grandparents unless one of them is there otherwise it’s unethical. She explains they’re both experiencing signs of early on-set schizophrenia.

A neighbor named Stacey comes over, telling them their grandparents volunteered at the hospital when she was in rehab, and she baked treats to thank them.

The kids get an Ethernet cord and now talk to their mom on Skype. Tyler tells her Nana is acting weird. The mom tells them they’re old, and that’s just how old people act. Becca defends them and says they are weird but nice. Tyler and Becca both agree that this is a “1” on the scale of problems. Their mom comments how she wishes she could see them (but can’t because their webcam is blocked from Nana’s mishap in the kitchen). Their mom leaves to watch her boyfriend in a Hairy Chest contest on the cruise ship.

That night, at 10:16 PM, they hear a horrible commotion outside the door. They want to know what Nana is doing this time but are too scared to look. Becca decides just to open the door and film for a short while, for the documentary’s sake. When she opens the door, they see Nana running past, with both arms behind her back, rushing past them, in both directions. Just as she’s about to crawl towards the camera, they shut and lock the door.

THURSDAY MORNING

The next morning, the four of them go out into the woods. Becca says she doesn’t want to leave without getting an “elixir” for Mom. While the grandparents are ahead on the trail, Tyler begins to mimic Nana’s running with her arms behind the back… only to get caught by Nana, who tells them they’re going to miss the family of foxes. They turn the corner and see Nana staring into a well. They ask her what she’s looking at, but Pop-Pop tells them it’s nothing.

Tyler and Becca return to the well later to try to figure out what is hidden inside. But all they pull up is water.

Becca goes in the shed and finds Pop-Pop with a rifle in his mouth. He declares he’s just cleaning it and then mimics cleaning it.

Later that evening, Becca is in the living room and hears Nana laughing hysterically. She decides to show what kind of television show makes her Nana laugh, hoping it’s the same one her mom loves. But she finds Nana rocking in a chair, facing the wall. She asks Nana what she’s laughing about and is told the naughty spirits are inside her, and she laughs to keep them at bay. She then tells her a story about how there are people in the water that were stolen by people from another planet. These people will later be collected and sent back to this planet but for now, they’re at the bottom of water. Becca tries to interview her again, but she goes crazy when she is asked about the night that caused them to become estranged. When Becca presents it as a story about a girl who fell in love with an older man, whose family did not approve, and what she would say to the girl, Nana tells her “I would tell the girl I’m sorry.”

Becca now has her “elixir,” an apology from Nana. Outside the window, they see Nana and Pop-Pop in a heated argument with their neighbor, Stacey. They wonder what they are fighting about.

Becca decides Tyler is right and that they should set up the camera in the living room to see exactly what goes on at night. Becca also wonders what’s in the basement given that they were told not to go down there.

At night, Tyler is freaking out because he touched something slimy on the toilet handle and can feel it seeping into his skin. Becca gets tissues and helps wipe it off. Time passes, and they fall asleep. In the living area, Nana opens and slams the basement door several times. She then rushes around the room, crawling like a dog… then appears RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE HIDDEN CAMERA and screams. She picks up the camera and then films herself going into the kitchen where she grabs a butcher knife. She makes her way up to the kids’ bedroom and begins pounding at their door. Becca and Tyler wake up, startled. They can hear Nana trying to get in but just stay still.

FRIDAY MORNING:

The next morning, they watch the footage and see that Nana was trying to kill them. Becca tells them that their mom is back from her vacation that day so they just have to avoid their grandparents all day until she can come and get them. They throw the ball around and every time the grandparents come by, they tell them “We’re playing. This is how kids play.”

Inside, they try to avoid their grandparents by going out to play but Nana asks if Becca can help clean the oven first. Becca leans in, but Nana tells her to go in further. Tyler objects but Nana tells him they’ve done this before. Becca finally climbs all the way in and Nana pushes her fully inside and shuts the door, telling her she wants to do something real quick – and wipes down the handle. Tyler screams at her to open up the oven, and she does. Becca is shaken up, and they quickly go outside and play.

They wait until the grandparents are out front and then get on Skype, hoping to sneak in a call without the grandparents being aware. The oil has now been scrubbed off of the webcam so their mom can see them, too. The mom is back home and tries telling them about her vacation and a fight with her boyfriend, but they quickly tell her that she needs to come and pick them up right now. She tells them, “Do you know how long it’d take to drive from here to there?” but they tell her to get in the car immediately and make her way to them. They say that their grandparents are scaring them; Nana tried to kill them with a butcher knife, and Pop-Pop put a gun in his mouth and she’s afraid he’s going to hurt himself. Tyler films the grandparents from the window so his mom can see them. The mom is now white-faced and tells them she has to tell them something and for them to listen – “THOSE ARE NOT YOUR GRANDPARENTS.” She asks if they’ve been staying with them all week and tries to call the local police but gets a recorded message (the station is closed). The mom complains that the hick town has an incompetent police department, and she’s going to drive to come get them and will continue to try to call the police on the way. Heading out, she tells them to get somewhere safe… but just then the grandparents return, and they shut down Skype. The grandparents suggest having a board game night, but the kids say they want to check something outside while the grandparents figure out the teams. They head for the yard only to see STACEY HANGING DEAD FROM A TREE. Nana appears and tells them they already have the teams – old versus young.

The kids are forced to play Yahtzee with the fake grandparents, who eerily pretend everything is normal, Nana complaining how competitive Pop-Pop is. They begin to play the game, but the grandparents are becoming more demented. Pop-Pop begins dressing up for the costume party again. Becca excuses herself from the game saying she’s got to film something real quick. Pop-Pop is suspicious and angry. Nana gets excited and starts eating cookies frantically. She turns to the camera Tyler has placed on the table and screams “YAHTZEE!”

Becca goes down to the basement, explaining to the viewer that she thinks her real grandparents have been trapped down there, and that’s why Pop-Pop told them to stay away. She begins calling out for the real Nana and Pop-Pop but doesn’t hear a response. In the corner, she sees a dumpster and hurries over to it. Inside are family photos of her real grandparents. She also sees something from Meadow Shade which she now learns is a MENTAL HOSPITAL. She digs some more and finds a hammer with blood and white hair on it… and then sees THE CORPSES OF AN OLD WOMAN AND OLD MAN. Immediately behind her, Pop-Pop has appeared. He explains that he and the woman they know as Nana were mental patients and their real grandparents were volunteers. When they told them about their upcoming visit with their grandchildren, the two imposters decided it would be fun to experience in their place. But he is now determined to kill Becca. He chases Becca up into her room and locks her in. But she manages to defend herself, then busts the lock and escapes.

It’s past 9:30 PM. Nana is beginning to sundown and starts crawling around the couches, chasing Becca. Meanwhile, Pop-Pop comes down to the kitchen with Tyler, who is frozen in fear, just like during the peewee game. Pop-Pop tells him he’s “under a spell” and tells Tyler he never liked him. He goes behind the kitchen counter and removes his pants while the frozen Tyler looks on. Simultaneously, Becca continues to be chased by Nana. Becca is hiding in the corner facing the mirror but as normal, she doesn’t look at herself, so she’s oblivious that Nana is creeping up on her. Nana smashes Becca’s face into the mirror and pieces of glass shatter all around them. Becca picks up a shard of glass as Nana jumps on top of her, clawing at her.

In the kitchen, Pop-Pop has now revealed that he’s removed a dirty diaper. He comments that he’s noticed Tyler doesn’t like germs… and then shoves the dirty adult diaper into Tyler’s face.

Meanwhile, Nana is on top of Becca, trying to kill her, but Becca stabs Nana to death with the glass shared. In the kitchen, Becca encourages Tyler to snap out of his frozen state, and he does, charging at Pop-Pop again and again and shouting as if he’s tackling the big player on the peewee league. He has so much adrenaline that he pummels Pop-Pop to the ground and then smashes the refrigerator door against his head several times (unseen to the audience).

The kids run outside to find their mom and police cars out front. They hug their mom as the old time music that Becca promised to play at an important moment in her film plays.

Back home, the mom tells Becca that she used to be a great singer, and she could tell her mom was proud of her when she’d sing around the house as a kid. The fight happened because they didn’t approve of her husband and when her mom blocked the door to keep her from leaving, she hit her mom and in response, her dad hit her. Stunned by the event, she stormed out and never talked to them again. She tells Becca not to hold on to anger. In response, we see the slideshow of Becca’s dad that she previously said was banned from her documentary, played in full.

As the credits roll, we see Becca brushing her hair while looking at herself in the mirror while Tyler performs a rap to camera about the events that took place over those five days, including getting a used adult diaper shoved in his face and how it took two bars of soap to feel clean again. He says it did not taste like chicken.

Tyler and Becca go to spend the week with their estranged grandparents while their mom is on vacation with her new boyfriend. Little do they know, but the grandparents are actually patients at a mental hospital, who killed the real grandparents and took over their lives when they heard of the upcoming visit. The kids kill the imposters in self-defense and the mom regrets having a 15-year grudge against her now deceased parents, who were harmless in retrospect. Because of this, Becca forgives her father for abandoning the family years ago.

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Kevin Bacon dances back to 'Footloose' high school

PAYSON, Utah — Actor Kevin Bacon on Saturday returned to the Utah high school where the cult classic movie “Footloose” was filmed more than 40 years.

Bacon danced his way to a stage on a Payson High School athletic field Saturday to greet students before what likely was the final prom held at the school, which is set to be torn down next spring.

“You talked me into it,” Bacon said, according to video posted by Salt Lake City’s ABC 4. “It’s great to see that kind of commitment to anything. I also think that it’s amazing to see the power that this movie has had to bring people together.”

Bacon starred in “Footloose” as a Chicago teen who moved to a small town and fought its ban on dancing. Payson High School students ended Saturday with a “Footloose”-themed prom, just as the movie ended.

About 21,000 people live in Payson, which is about 60 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Principal Jesse Sorenson said students for years have tried to persuade Bacon to visit.

What started as lighthearted appeals on social media turned into a community wide campaign to partner with Bacon’s charity, Sorenson said. Students agreed to help put together 5,000 care packages for the charity, SixDegrees, to convince Bacon to visit.

Students for weeks wrote hopeful messages for the eventual owners of each of the care packages and worked with the Utah Film Commission and SixDegrees to raise money and donations of toiletries, clothing and other items to go in the backpacks, Sorenson said.

On Saturday, Bacon helped fill the bags alongside what Sorenson estimated was about 700 students and 300 community members.

Sorenson, who graduated from Payson High School in 1995, said DJs always play the song “Footloose” at proms, and students recreate the film’s iconic dance. Older residents tell stories of being an extra in the film and delight in pointing out spots in Payson shown in the movie, he said.

“It’s something they can be proud of, and it’s fun for them,” the principal said.

Cheech Marin draws on the discrimination his WWII veteran dad experienced for his new movie role

Comedian, actor and activist Cheech Marin says he doesn’t let rules govern his life. But for his new role in “The Long Game,” an underdog sports movie about  five Mexican American teens who win the Texas high school golf championship in 1957 despite the racism they faced at the time , Marin found inspiration in the rules that guided his father.

“When my dad came back from World War II, the whole world was the Navy because he knew exactly what to do in that world,” Marin said in an interview with NBC News, describing the rules that his father followed to get through life after the military.

“When he came out of the service, he was bewildered because he wasn’t accepted in a lot of employable positions,” Marin said about his Mexican American father. “And he became a policeman, which was all rules. So he was safe in that environment.”    

The movie "The Long Game" tells the real-life story of J.B. Peña (played by actor Jay Hernandez), a World War II veteran and school district superintendent who’s rejected from membership at the whites-only San Felipe Country Club in Del Rio, Texas, because he's Mexican American. He goes on, however, to form a high school golf team, the Mustangs, for the Mexican American teens who were caddies at the whites-only club and had fallen in love with the sport. The golf team  went on to win the high school championship .

Marin plays Pollo, a World War I veteran who's a groundskeeper at the country club — where he, like Peña, could not have been a member because of his ethnicity.

In the film also starring Dennis Quaid, viewers see Marin wearing a large cage over his head to protect himself from stray golf balls on the course. While the cage may look like a comedic prop, Marin said it symbolizes the “shell shock” or trauma that veterans like his father and other Mexican Americans carried as civilians once they came back.

“I kind of based it on anybody who comes out of a World War or any kind of big war. They come out of that traumatized,” he said, reflecting on his character in the movie. “This cage that he wears is his armor against the outside world.”  

In the movie, Pollo tells Peña that when he was serving in World War I, the military did not give him a gas mask in the trenches. But, Pollo tells Peña, you still have to "play as it lies," a golf expression that means you have to play the ball wherever it falls — and deal with current realities.

“He has to deal with not only having had mustard gas, which really affects you, but how he fits into his own hometown,” Marin said, dissecting his character. “He’s now a stranger in his own hometown. So that kind of affects how he sees the world, how he hides from it and then, how he comes out every once in a while.”

“The Long Game,” Marin said, is a story about being accepted. And the five Mexican American teens' victory is a symbol of earning that respect.

“The first year they put a team together, they won the state championship at the course that they weren’t allowed to play on as players,” Marin said. “So you saw the change happening right then and there.”

Off-screen, fans know Marin as a counterculture icon and half of the iconic comedic duo Cheech and Chong, along with his roles in movies such as “Up in Smoke” (1978) and “Born in East L.A.” (1987) and in the TV show “Nash Bridges,” among others.

When asked to look back on the classic comedies and shows that helped make his career, Marin said there are many more Latino stories now than before.

“You can’t turn on TV today without seeing a lot of Latino characters in every show that you watch. And maybe some of our biggest stars are Latinos, especially in music,” he said. “And so, we made a lot of progress, and there’s still progress to be made.”

One area where Marin has pushed for greater acceptance and visibility is the arts: A big patron and collector, especially of Chicano art, Marin partnered in 2022 with the Riverside Art Museum and the city of Riverside in California to  create a permanent museum space for Chicano art . The museum has drawn praise for its focus on U.S. Latino art.

Marin said that while Latinos are making breakthroughs as a community, Hispanics are not “really accepted into the mainstream” until they have their own museum.

“One of the people I talked to in the museum world when we started [the museum space] said, ‘We’ll come back and check in with you in about 20 years, 'cause that’s the least amount of time that you have to put in order to be accepted as official,’” Marin said. “I’m going to stay alive just for that purpose.”

For more from NBC Latino,  sign up for our weekly newsletter .

Arturo Conde is an editor and a bilingual freelance journalist. He writes for La Opinión A Coruña and has been published in Fusion, Univision and City Limits.  

Kevin Bacon returns to 'Footloose' school 40 years later: 'Things look a little different'

Kevin Bacon just kicked off his Sunday shoes and returned to high school − the "Footloose" high school, that is.

On Saturday, the " Tremors " and "Mystic River" star visited the Utah school where he shot his movie " Footloose " four decades ago, after students there campaigned to get him to come.

"40 years. That just blows my mind," Bacon, 65, said at Payson High School, according to a video shared on Instagram by the Utah Office of Tourism. "Things look a little different around here. I'd say the thing that looks the most different is me."

Payson High School students had launched a social media campaign using the hashtag #bacontopayson, which called on the actor to visit to commemorate the 1984 movie's 40th anniversary and to mark their last prom before the school is relocated. The students also held benefits to support Bacon's charity, SixDegrees.org .

'Feels like a heartbeat': Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick celebrate 35 years of marriage

In March, Bacon confirmed to students that he would visit, telling them he has been "so impressed" by their efforts. "The movie, and Payson High School, was a big part of my life, and I've been amazed at the work all of you have been putting into this ," he said on the "Today" show, also praising them for working with his foundation to "give back to your community."

During his visit on Saturday, Bacon said that when he heard about the campaign, he thought, "Wow, this is crazy," according to ABC4. But the actor told the "tireless" students that they "talked me into it."

Bacon also said it's "amazing" the power that "Footloose" has had to "bring people together and connect on the basic ideas," including "standing up to authority sometimes, and to being forgiving of people who are not exactly the same as you, and for standing up for your own freedoms and your right to express yourself, and for having compassion for other people."

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Segwick cut loose: The couple did the viral 'Footloose' TikTok dance

In his Instagram Stories, Bacon shared a video of himself posing with Payson High School students as he received an honorary diploma. "Let's dance!" the actor and the students shouted as they took a photo together. Another Instagram clip showed Bacon visiting his locker from the movie.

According to SixDegrees.org , Payson High School students helped build 5,000 essential care kits containing hygiene items, socks, journals, reusable water bottles, shelf-stable goods and vouchers for free counseling, which will be distributed to "young people and families in need of resources throughout Utah, Colorado and Nevada." Per a video of the event posted by the Utah tourism office, Bacon said the students were "turning what could be just a movie star coming back to get (patted) on the back into something really positive."

Contributing: Naledi Ushe

• Cast & crew

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Plot under wraps Plot under wraps Plot under wraps

• Jeff Fowler
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• John Whittington
• Ben Schwartz
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• Maddie Wachowski

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• Trivia The film makers of the prior movies have mentioned playing both "Sonic Adventure 2" and the "Shadow The Hedgehog" solo game for inspiration. The film is also inspired by narrative elements from the Saturday morning animated television series "Sonic the Hedgehog" (1993 - 1994).
• Connections Follows Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
• When will Sonic the Hedgehog 3 be released? Powered by Alexa
• December 20, 2024 (United States)
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