Let's Talk About the Twist in M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Visit' (Spoilers!)

Olivia DeJonge in ‘The Visit’ (Universal Pictures)

[Warning: We’re going to spoil the big twist of The Visit in the very first paragraph and then discuss the ending, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, look away.]

For someone who was at one point regarded as the Master of the Mind-Blowing Plot Twist, it’s funny to think how almost every one of director M. Night Shyamalan’s surprise endings are essentially summed up by a single line of dialogue. Think, “I see dead people,” in The Sixth Sense, “They called me Mr. Glass,” in Unbreakable or “Swing away,” in Signs. The director’s new film, The Visit (in theaters today) tosses another one sentence-wonder on the pile: “Those aren’t your grandparents.” Uttered at the pivot point between the second and third acts, those words provide an otherwise formulaic movie with a much-needed kick in the pants as it enters the climactic home stretch.

But let’s back up a minute to explain why that sentence pulls the audience back in at the moment they might otherwise check out. Made in The Blair Witch Project found-footage tradition, The Visit depicts a family reunion that’s being documented by a pair of precocious youngsters, 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and 13-year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould). In order to give their single mom (Kathryn Hahn) a chance to take a much-needed vacation with her new boyfriend — her first steady beau since their father split — the kids have volunteered to spend a week with the grandparents they’ve never met. How have they gone this long without receiving a birthday phone call or even a card from their Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie)? Well, as Mom tells it, she fled their household nearly two decades ago under contentious circumstances and has deliberately refrained from seeing or speaking to them since. She’s clinging to that resentment so fiercely, she doesn’t even have any pictures of her parents around…a plot point that will become important later on.

Deanna Dunagan in ‘The Visit’ (Universal Pictures)

After years of silence, the old folks have taken steps to heal this rift by asking to meet their grandchildren. Becca, the budding filmmaker of the two siblings, sees the potential for a heart-wrenching documentary to be made from this week-long vacation and eagerly equips herself with two digital cameras. But rather than teary confessionals and family secrets laid bare, she ends up capturing some truly disturbing behavior not long after she and Tyler pass through the doorway of Nana and Pop Pop’s isolated Pennsylvania farmhouse. On their very first night, Becca records her grandmother roaming about the house, vomiting all over the floor. And at roughly the same time each subsequent evening, Nana is out of her bed doing something bizarre, whether it’s crawling around the floor on her hands and knees or moaning and banging on cabinets and doors. Pop Pop blames her problems on “sundowning,” an actual medical condition affecting dementia patients. Meanwhile, he’s got his own problems, including a shed where he keeps poop-filled diapers (he’s incontinent, you see) and a penchant for cleaning guns by sticking them in his mouth.

Much of this potentially paranormal activity has already been teased in the movie’s trailer, which is designed to make you think that: A) The grandparents are demons; B) The grandparents are possessed by demons; C) The grandparents have been replaced by body-snatching monsters from a parallel dimension. As it turns out, though, their crazy behavior is due to the fact that they’re both legitimately crazy. They’re also — big twist! — not Nana and Pop Pop, as Hahn’s character belatedly reveals when Becca and Tyler surreptitiously film the elderly couple during a Skype session on the last day of their stay. (Estranged daughter that she is, she has conveniently not wanted to speak with them in earlier video calls.) Because Mom is hours away by car and the local police aren’t answering, the kids have to stay in the house with these strangers for a full day pretending like nothing has changed.

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Too bad for them that Pop Pop decides to prove that being crazy isn’t the same thing as being stupid. Aware that the ruse is up, he fills in the backstory behind the twist. Prior to taking up residence in the farmhouse, he and “Nana” were patients at a nearby mental hospital where the real Nana and Pop Pop were regular volunteers.

Jealous at their happiness over the impending visit of their grandkids, the frauds forced their way into the home and murdered the couple with a hammer, stashing their bodies in the basement. (Throughout the movie, other folks from the hospital have been stopping by the house to check up on the popular duo, but their replacements have conspired to be “out for a walk” during these visits.) They then went to the train station to pick up Becca and Tyler who were none the wiser because, remember, no pictures! Also, no Mom around to warn them otherwise. (Not for nothing, but this twist really does elevate Hahn to Worst Mother in the World status.)

Peter McRobbie in ‘The Visit’ (Universal Pictures)

Of course, now that the kids know, they’ll have to die — a fate they manage to avoid by killing the escaped mental patients instead. As the siblings stumble outside, the cops and their mother finally show up and whisk them away to safety. In a final coda, Becca finally gets the on-camera waterworks she’s been searching for when Mom reveals that she had the opportunity to mend fences with her parents years ago, but decided to hold onto her grudge instead — a choice that indirectly led to their deaths. She tearfully tells her daughter that forgiveness is essential, which in turn allows Becca to let go of some of the lingering anger she feels towards her own father for ditching their family.

In the past, some of Shyamalan’s twists have deepened his movies, turning, for instance, The Sixth Sense into a parable about grief and Unbreakable into a real world exploration of comic-book mythology. With The Visit though, the big revelation cheapens the movie to a certain extent. When you step back and think about it, there’s something deeply unpleasant about the way he’s using the mentally ill as routine horror-movie boogeymen. In the moment, however, the twist achieves its goal of catching the audience off guard. During the screening I was in, a wave of loud gasps swept through the packed house when Hahn said, “Those aren’t your grandparents” — the same gasps I heard 16 years ago in the final moments of The Sixth Sense when everyone figured out at the same instant that Bruce Willis had been dead all along. Shyamalan may no longer be considered “The Next Spielberg,” but that reaction to The Visit indicates that he’s still capable of some Spielbergian surprises.