M. Night Shyamalan’s Secretly-Made Movie ‘The Visit’ Hits Theaters Next Year: Do You Care?
M. Night Shyamalan may perhaps be one of the most disappointing auteurs in the minds of many critics and movie fans. He had a strong start with The Sixth Sense, which may go down in history as one of those most quoted movies ever, but his career took a turn when he released The Village, and things only went downhill from there, with films like Lady in the Water and The Last Airbender. Shyamalan’s name became a joke, so much so that attaching his name to something became a sort of poison (remember when audiences groaned at the very sight of his name in the trailer for the movie Devil?). It may be because of that reaction that Shyamalan went into hiding to make his next movie, which is a low budget film called The Visit.
Deadline reports that Universal Pictures has just acquired Shyamalan’s new thriller, and that it is slated for a September 11, 2015 release. Word also has it that this new flick is more in the vein of Shyamalan’s earlier work than his later work.
“He wanted to get back to his roots and make a film outside the studio system, and he self-financed and shot this in and around his home in Pennsylvania. He then partnered with Blumhouse, which has a first-look deal at Universal and specializes in low-budget genre fare like ‘Ouija,’ its latest effort that topped the weekend box office two straight weeks.”
This may be what Shyamalan needs in order to make a comeback. On top of the declining quality of his films, his ego and overall outlook are something audiences picked up on and responded to negatively. It is a trait that even his actors are aware of. The Huffington Post sat down with Samuel L. Jackson a couple years back, and in that interview, Jackson compared Shyamalan to Tarantino.
“Quentin makes movies that Quentin wants to see. I don’t think M. Night makes movies for the same reason And there’s, you know, ‘I’m smarter than everybody coming to watch my movie.’ Quentin’s not that. He’s just, ‘I want you to love my movie. I want you to love it and enjoy it because this is f**king cool.'”
We shall see if this new film will mark the return of the old M. Night Shyamalan soon enough. The synopsis for the movie is as follows.
“‘The Visit’ focuses on a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania farm for a weeklong trip. Once the children discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home are growing smaller every day.”
Does Shyamalan’s new movie have you excited, or are you off the bandwagon for the foreseeable future? Let us know below!
