The Visit (2015 American film)

Two siblings from Philadelphia, 15-year-old Becca and 13-year-old Tyler, prepare for a five-day visit with their grandparents while their divorced mother Loretta goes on a cruise with her boyfriend. Loretta reveals that she has not spoken to her parents in 15 years after marrying her high-school teacher, of whom her parents disapproved. Having never met their grandparents, the teens plan to record a documentary film about their visit using a camcorder.

Becca and Tyler meet their grandparents, referred to as "Nana" and "Pop Pop," at a train station. When they arrive at their isolated farmhouse, Becca and Tyler are instructed to never go into the basement because it contains mold, and that bedtime is at 9:30 every evening, after which they shouldn't leave their room. The first night, an hour past curfew, Becca ventures downstairs for something to eat and sees Nana projectile vomiting all over the house, which frightens her. She tells Pop Pop, who dismisses it as Nana having the stomach flu. He then reminds her not to leave their bedroom after 9:30 pm.

Over the next few days, Becca and Tyler notice their grandparents exhibiting more peculiar and disturbing behavior. Tyler walks into Pop Pop's shed and finds a large pile of soiled adult diapers. Becca asks Nana about the day Loretta left home, and Nana begins to shake and scream. Later, Pop Pop and Nana are confronted by a woman they helped in counseling, and she goes into the backyard with them but is never seen leaving. Concerned about the events, Tyler decides to secretly film what happens downstairs at night, but Nana discovers the hidden camera, retrieves a large knife, and tries unsuccessfully to break into the children's locked bedroom.

When Becca and Tyler view the camera footage of Nana with the knife, they contact Loretta and beg her to come get them. They show her the parents while they were outside, and she panics and says they are not her parents. Realizing that they have been with strangers all week, the teenagers try to leave the house, but Nana and Pop Pop trap them inside and force them to play Yahtzee. Later, Becca sneaks into the basement and finds the corpses of her real grandparents, along with uniforms from the mental hospital at which they worked, revealing the impostors as escaped patients. Pop Pop grabs Becca and imprisons her in his bedroom with Nana, who tries to attack her in a psychotic fit. He then torments Tyler psychologically by smearing his face with his dirty diaper. Becca fatally stabs Nana with a glass shard from a broken mirror, then runs into the kitchen and attacks Pop Pop. As Pop Pop starts to gain the upper hand, Tyler knocks him to the floor and kills him by repeatedly slamming his head in the refrigerator. The teens escape outside unharmed, where they are met by their mother and police officers.

In the aftermath, Becca asks Loretta about what happened the day she left home 15 years ago. Loretta states that she had a major argument with her parents, during which she hit her mother and was then struck by her father. Loretta then left home and ignored their attempts to contact her. Loretta concludes that reconciliation was always possible had she wanted it. She then tells Becca not to hold on to anger over her father's abandonment of her.

• Olivia DeJonge as Becca[6]
• Ed Oxenbould as Tyler[6]
• Deanna Dunagan as Marja Bella Jamison (Claire), also known as "Nana"[6]
• Peter McRobbie as Frederick Spencer Jamison (Mitchell), also known as "Pop Pop"[6]
• Kathryn Hahn as Loretta Jamison, Becca and Tyler's mother[6]
• Patch Darragh as Dr. Sam
• Celia Keenan-Bolger as Stacey
• Benjamin Kanes as Corin, Becca and Tyler's father[6]

Filming began on February 19, 2014, under the preliminary title Sundowning.[7] Sundowning is the increased restlessness and confusion of some dementia patients during the afternoon and evening.[8] M. Night Shyamalan's Blinding Edge Pictures was the production company, with Shyamalan and Marc Bienstock producing, and Steven Schneider and Ashwin Rajan as executive producers.[9][10] Later on, producer Jason Blum and his company Blumhouse Productions were included in the credits.[11] Although thousands of American children were auditioned for the film's two lead roles of Becca and Tyler, in what Shyamalan later characterized as a "total fluke", he eventually selected a pair of relatively unknown Australian juvenile actors, Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould, to portray the film's dual Philadelphia-native teenage protagonists.[12][13]

Shyamalan admitted that he had trouble keeping the tone for the film consistent during the editing phase, telling Bloody Disgusting that the first cut of the film resembled an art house film more than a horror film. A second cut went in the opposite direction and the film became a comedy. He eventually struck a middle balance and cut the film as a thriller, which, according to him, helped tie the different elements together as they "could stay in service of the movie".[14]

There is no film score for most of the film, as is common for found footage films. Paul Cantelon is credited for "epilogue theme". A few songs are heard during the film.

Universal began The Visit's theatrical wide release in the United States on September 11, 2015.[15] On April 17, 2015, the first official trailer was released to theaters, attached to the film Unfriended, and it was released online later that week.[11][16] The film premiered in the Republic of Ireland on August 30, 2015, in a special screening that was attended by Shyamalan.[17]

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