The Visit

A brother and sister are sent to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania farm for a week-long trip. Once the children discover that the elderly couple are involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home are growing smaller every day.

Why we’re looking forward to this: The Visit is written and directed by M Night Shyamalan, and while this may have some of you running for the hills, he looks to be back on form with both this and the upcoming Wayward Pines television show, and based on the trailer this might just be the film that puts him back on the map.

Having charmed audiences with The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, Shyamalan lost his mojo a little with The Village and The Lady In The Water, so it’s good to see him back in horror territory for this tale of two kids stuck in the middle of nowhere with their increasingly weird grandparents. Though shot in a found footage style, The Visit seems to rely less on the extreme camera shake of many similarly lensed flicks, and more on a naturalistic documentary style which is no bad thing.

The children themselves, played by Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould, seem to actually be likeable and able to act, which is always a plus, but the standout performance from the trailer is their grandmother (Deanna Dunagan) who appears to be utterly deranged, and plenty creepy with it, asking DeJonge if she wouldn’t mind climbing into the oven to clean it.

Shyamalan apparently used his fee for writing 2013’s Will Smith movie After Earth to self-produce The Visit, thus regaining full creative control which had been lacking on his more recent films, and which perhaps explains the drop in quality, so here’s hoping that his mojo is well and truly restored to its previous shining state.

The Visit is taking up residence in cinemas in September 2015.

RICHARD COSGROVE