Here’s 11 Years Ago Today, M. Night Shyamalan Began His Comeback With a Horror Movie That Had to Succeed

It has been 11 years since M. Night Shyamalan released the movie that saved his career. Shyamalan became one of the world’s biggest directors thanks to his breakout third film, The Sixth Sense, in 1999. That movie was a phenomenon, with a great performance by Bruce Willis and an all-time movie quote in “I see dead people.” His follow-up, Unbreakable, remains a cult classic and a beloved favorite among comic book crowds, and the movie after that, Signs, was a creepy alien horror movie that is better than most people remember. However, things went downhill after that, and by 2015, Shyamalan was in director’s jail.

That year, Shyamalan began his comeback when he released The Visit on September 11, 2015, a movie that he said had to succeed or he would be out of the film business.

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit Saved His Filmmaking Career

In 2015, Shyamalan was coming off a string of failures. It all started with The Village in 2004, which was a box office success, but it was where people started to turn on him because of his reliance on twist endings. Critics shredded Lady in the Water as presumptuous, and then The Happening was ridiculed to no end, with some calling it one of the worst movies ever made. After disappointing franchise fans with his take on The Last Airbender and then getting terrible reviews for After Earth with Will Smith and Jaden Smith as the stars, Shyamalan was reeling.

Shyamalan said he couldn’t get anyone to greenlight a movie for him after that, and he thought his directing career had ended. In 2015, Shyamalan took a huge risk. He borrowed $5 million against his home to make a found-footage horror movie called The Visit. According to Shyamalan, if this movie had failed, he could have lost everything, and his career would have been over. Even after making the movie, every studio in Hollywood passed on it. He then made some changes to make it more of a thriller, and Universal Pictures finally agreed to distribute it.

The Visit is a movie about two children named Becca and Tyler whose divorced mother goes on a cruise with her boyfriend and sends the kids to her estranged parents, whom she hasn’t seen in 15 years. The teens have never met their grandparents, and they decide to use their camcorder to make a documentary about the trip. When they get there, they receive rules, including never going in the basement and never leaving their room after 9:30 p.m. However, it isn’t long before they realize there is something wrong with their grandparents.

The gamble paid off for Shyamalan. The movie received a 68% Rotten Tomatoes score, and while not great, it was still the director’s best since Signs. The bigger deal was the box office. While Shyamalan put up $5 million from a loan he took out, the movie made $98.45 million worldwide and $65.2 million domestically. Shyamalan even claimed that most of the executives who refused to distribute his movie no longer have their jobs in Hollywood.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Career Has Exploded Again Since The Visit

When Shyamalan released The Visit 11 years ago, it saved the home that he took a loan against, and it also resurrected his career in Hollywood. The success of The Visit allowed Shyamalan to make a big horror movie again, and it was a film that actually tied into one of his best films. One year after The Visit, Shyamalan directed the psychological thriller movie Split, which Universal also distributed. This movie starred James McAvoy as a killer with dissociative identity disorder, with one of his alters being a creature known as The Beast.

The end of Split had a surprise appearance by Bruce Willis, who returned as his Unbreakable character, David Dunn. Shot for only $9 million, the movie made $278.5 million at the box office, making it Shyamalan’s most successful movie in years. Three years later, Shyamalan finished the trilogy with Glass, which had McAvoy and Willis return, and the latter reunited with Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr. Glass from Unbreakable. That movie made $247 million on a $20 million budget.

When Shyamalan borrowed the money to make The Visit, he knew he had one chance to make a successful movie, or his career was finished. What resulted was a movie that was entertaining and good enough to help him get more chances, and he paid that off with two of the biggest movies of his career over the next four years.