M. Night Shyamalan’s Horror Movie From 8 Years Ago Is More Impressive Based On Its Budget Record

An 8-year-old M. Night Shyamalan movie is not only impressive because it features one of his best twists but also because it maintains a budget record. While most directors experience a fair share of ebbs and flows, failures and successes during their filmmaking careers, M. Night Shyamalan is among the few to have experienced some major highs and equally major lows during his directorial journey. He rose to fame after The Sixth Sense earned him two Academy Award nominations and kept growing from strength to strength as a director with films like Signs and The Village.

However, his filmmaking career took a strange turn when a cascade of flops, like Lady in the Water, The Happening, After Earth, and The Last Airbender, plagued his trajectory. Despite experiencing a string of failures, M. Night Shyamalan eventually had a resurgence. One of the films that marked his resurgence also maintains a budget record that will likely not be broken in the near future.

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The Visit Still Has The Lowest Budget Of Any M. Night Shyamalan Movie

Only three M. Night Shyamalan movies (excluding his debut film, Praying with Anger) are known to have had seven-figure budgets: Wide Awake, The Visit, and Split. All his other films exceeded the $10 million mark, and some even crossed $100 million in budget. Among the three films, The Visit had the lowest budget, with estimates suggesting that only $5 million was funded into the project. The director’s second film, Wide Awake, had a slightly higher budget of $6 million, while Split was surprisingly a little below $10 million with a budget of around $9 million.

Why The Visit’s Budget Was So Low

Several factors contributed to The Visit‘s low budget. One of the primary reasons the movie was made on a shoestring budget was that M. Night Shyamalan was coming off some losses after the underwhelming critical ratings of After Earth and The Last Airbender. After finding new success with Wayward Pines, Shyamalan eventually found the confidence to take a leap and borrow a $5 million loan against his estate to fund The Visit (via Rolling Stone). Fortunately, The Visit went on to earn $98 million at the box office and even got the label of being a film that marked his return to form.

Shyamalan was likely able to make the film with such a minimal budget because of its found footage format. The Visit‘s setting is primarily confined to a home. Even the terrors in its horror narrative rely more on psychological elements. Due to the lack of supernatural underpinnings, the director seemingly kept CGI usage to the minimum or entirely avoided it. Apart from that, unlike big-budget M. Night Shyamalan movies like After Earth and Signs, The Visit does not even feature any highly renowned actors as its leads, which probably further reduced its cost of production.

The Visit

PG-13

Horror

Comedy

From director M. Night Shyamalan, The Visit follows two siblings who are sent to stay with their estranged grandparents while their mother is out of town on vacation. Realizing that all isn’t what it seems during their stay, the siblings set out to find out what is really going on at their grandparents’ home. Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould star as Becca and Tyler, with Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, and Kathryn Hahn making up the rest of the main cast. 

Release Date

September 11, 2015

Director

M. Night Shyamalan

Cast

Olivia De Jonge , Peter McRobbie , Kathryn Hahn , Benjamin Kanes , Deanna Dunagan , Ed Oxenbould

Runtime

94minutes

Writers

M. Night Syamalan

Budget

$5 million

Studio(s)

Universal Pictures

Distributor(s)

Universal Pictures