Low-budget horror movie with chilling twist praised as being one of M. Night Shyamalan's best films
Horror fans have branded a creepy found-footage film from 2015 as one of M. Night Shyamalan's most underrated works.
If somebody were to ask you about the best M. Night Shyamalan films, the one most likely to pop into your head is James McAvoy and Anya Taylor-Joy's psychological thriller Split.
Perhaps you're more of a fan of his 1999 ghost flick The Sixth Sense, 2002's sci-fi horror Signs or maybe you prefer his more recent offerings, such as Trap or Old.
However many Shyamalan fans will tell you that one of his best works is a low-budget film which is often overlooked.
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Starring Kathryn Hahn, Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie, The Visit tells the story of how two children's visit to their estranged grandparents goes horrifically wrong.
Hoping to enjoy a five-day cruise with her new boyfriend, divorced mum Loretta (Hahn) sends her children Becca and Tyler to stay with their grandparents who she hasn't seen for the past 15 years.
The siblings (DeJonge and Oxenbould) decide to record their trip and at first their visit goes extremely well - until it doesn't.
After witnessing their grandparents increasingly unusual behaviour and discovering the reason why they're not allowed out of bed after 9:30pm, Becca and Tyler soon find themselves in a terrifying - and potentially deadly - situation.
We won't spoil the ending for you, but we can tell you that The Visit ranks highly among Shyamalan's back-catalogue.
Currently sitting at a respectable 68 percent on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, The Visit is seen by many critics as a 'return to form' for the director after a run of bad movies.
"The Visit is a pleasant surprise," one critic wrote at the time, while a second added: "After some big budget misfires, it's great to see him go back to his smaller, scarier roots."
The director would later reveal during an interview with Rolling Stone that he had funded The Visit by taking out a $5 million loan against his house, with the understanding that if this film failed it would be the end of his career.
After rejections from several film studios he was eventually able to reach an agreement with Universal and Paranormal Activity's Jason Blum joined the film as a producer.
The Visit would ultimately go on to make around $98 million, with Shyamalan keeping a list of the names of everyone who said no to the film on his wall.
Brenna Cooper