It seems like a distant memory, but for a short while M. Night Shyamalan was one of the most exciting new filmmakers to hit the scene. But following the success of Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense came a string of misfires — The Village, The Lady in the Water, The Happening, and After Earth. Seemingly just as quickly has he had ascended the mountain, he came tumbling down, hitting every jagged rock along the way. But Shyamalan is still at it and now we have the trailer for his latest film The Visit, which sees the director trying his hand at the found footage subgenre.
Now I don’t want to root against any filmmaker, but I just can’t get excited for this. I firmly believe the found footage subgenre to be tired, let alone a regressive form of filmmaking. It seems as if Shyamalan is just hopping on the backend of a fading trend instead of trying to recapture his own voice. Maybe Shyamalan can recapture his past glory and find a whole new form for found footage. We’ll see on September 11th, 2015.
The official synopsis:
Writer/director/producer M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable) and producer Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, The Purge and Insidious series) welcome you to Universal Pictures’ The Visit. Shyamalan returns to his roots with the terrifying story of 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.
