In 2015, when M. Night Shyamalan released ‘The visit‘, which has just arrived on Netflix, his career was on the decline: he had just come off a pair of consecutive box office failures (‘Airbender, the last warrior’ and ‘After Earth’) that had put an end to his intentions of entering into big budgets. They were, in addition, two films in which the personal stamp of the director that had characterized hits such as ‘The Sixth Sense’ or ‘Signs’ had disappeared.
That’s why, To finance ‘The Visit’, Shyamalan had to put his own money at risk: He mortgaged his house for five million dollars, and that was not all. Once it was finished, after being shot completely independently, no studio wanted it: it was too dark. He made a re-edit where he turned it into practically a comedy, but that didn’t work either. Finally, a third cut kept elements from the previous versions, turning it into a thriller with comedy elements. Universal and Blumhouse accepted it and the premiere became a success that grossed almost one hundred million dollars.
In this excellent thriller, Shyamalan tells us how two brothers are sent to spend a week with their grandparents, whom they barely know, on a remote farm. Upon arriving at the grandparents’ house, everything seems normal, but soon strange things begin to happen. The elders impose peculiar rules, such as not leaving the room after 9:30 at night. The boys hear disturbing noises and see alarming behavior from their grandparents, leading them to suspect that something is wrong. Little by little, the grandparents’ behavior becomes more and more erratic and sinister.
The result of this intriguing starting point is a tiny little film that, thanks to its concise plot and its wicked sense of humorat times seems more like an episode of ‘Tales from the Crypt’ than a typical commercial horror film. A genre that at the time was about to be reformulated forever thanks to films like ‘The Witch’, with a very different tone to this one, but with a comparable production philosophy.
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At WorldOfSoftware | Shyamalan’s ‘Knock on the Door’ may lack some madness, but it is an excellent film of apocalyptic claustrophobia