the visit movie full story

The Visit Explained (Plot And Ending)

The Visit is a 2015  horror   thriller  directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It follows two siblings who visit their estranged grandparents only to discover something is very wrong with them. As the children try to uncover the truth, they are increasingly terrorized by their grandparents’ bizarre behaviour. Here’s the plot and ending of The Visit explained; spoilers ahead.

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Here are links to the key aspects of the movie:

• – The Story
• – Plot Explained
• – Ending Explained
• – The Sense Of Dread
• – Separation, Remorse, and Personal Fears
• – Frequently Asked Questions Answered
• – Wrap Up

What is the story of The Visit?

The Visit is about two kids visiting their grandparents for the first time. They are also going there to hope and rebuild a bridge between their mom and grandparents and help their mom heal after a painful divorce. The movie is in documentary form.

The Visit is one of the most unnerving and realistic horror stories. A good thing about classic horror movies is that, after the movie ends, you can switch it off and go to bed,  knowing that you’re safe . Vampires, ghosts, and demonic powers don’t exist, and even if you are prone to these kinds of esoteric beliefs, there are safeguards. If your home is not built in an Indian burial ground and you haven’t bought any creepy-looking dolls from your local antiquary, you’re perfectly safe.

However, what about the idea of two kids spending five days with two escaped psychiatric ward patients in a remote farmhouse? Now, this is a thought that will send shivers down your spine. It’s a story that sounds not just realistic but real. It’s  something that might have happened in the past  or might happen in the future.

This is  what  The Visit  is all about . This idea, coupled with documentary-form storytelling, is why the movie is so unnerving to watch.

The Visit: Plot Explained

Loretta’s past.

As a young girl, Loretta Jamison fell in love with her high school teacher and decided to skip her hometown with him. Before leaving, she had a heated altercation with her parents and hasn’t seen them since. At the movie’s start, she is a single mom of 15-year-old Becca and 14-year-old Tyler, and she  hasn’t spoken to her parents in 15 years .

What really happened on the day Loretta left?

Loretta’s mom tries to stop her from leaving the house, and Loretta hits her mom, and her dad hits her. Soon after, her parents try to reach out to Loretta, but she refuses to take their calls, and years go by.

Meet The Grandparents

Years later, Loretta’s parents reach out to  meet their grandchildren . The grandparents are, seemingly, wholly reformed and now even help at the local psychiatric hospital. Although initially not too fond of the idea, Loretta is persuaded by the insistence of her children. While she had no intention of visiting the parents, she permitted her children to pay their grandparents a five-day visit.

At The Grandparents’

Their first meeting with Nana and Pop Pop starts on the right foot. They start getting to know each other, and other than a simple generational gap, nothing seems too strange. The only thing that seems off is that they are warned  not to leave the room after 9:30 in the evening .

The kids break this rule, and on the first night, they notice  Nana acting erratically , projectile vomiting, scratching wallpaper with her bare hands, and running around the house on all fours. Grandpa appears paranoid and hides his adult diapers in the garden shed, and the situation escalates each day.

The Visit Ending Explained: What happens in the end?

The ending of Visit has the kids finally showing the elderly couple to Loretta. She, completely horrified, states that  those are not her parents . The pair posing as Pop Pop and Nana are escaped psychiatric institution patients who murdered their grandparents and took their places.

The kids survive, kill their captors, and are found alive and well by their mom and the police. Becca kills Nana with a shard from the mirror, thus symbolically overcoming her fear of her reflection. Tyler kills Pop Pop by repeatedly slamming him in the head with a refrigerator door after overcoming his germaphobia and anxiety about freezing.

The Sense Of Dread

The elements of horror in this movie are just  perfectly executed . First of all, the film is shot as a documentary. Becca is an aspiring filmmaker who records the entire trip with her camera. From time to time, we see an interview of all the characters, which just serves as the perfect vessel for characterization.

No Ghouls or Cults

Another thing that evokes dread is  realism . There are no supernatural beings or demonic forces. It’s just two kids alone in a remote farmstead with two creepy, deranged people. Even in the end, when Loretta finds out what’s happening, it takes her hours to get there with the police. The scariest part is that it’s not that hard to imagine something along those lines really happening.

The  house itself is dread-inducing . The place is old and rustic. Like in The Black Phone soundproofing a room  could have prevented kids from hearing Nana rummaging around the house without a clear idea of what was happening, but this was not the case, as the old couple weren’t that capable.

The  characters  themselves  are perfectly played . Something is unnerving about Pop Pop and Nana from the very first scene. It’s the Uncanny Valley scenario where you feel that something’s off and shakes you to the core, but you have no idea what it is.

Separation, Remorse, and Personal Fears

What this movie does the best is explore the  ugly side of separation, old grudges, and remorse . The main reason why kids are insistent on visiting their grandparents is out of their desire to help their mom.

They see she’s remorseful for never  working things out with her parents . In light of her failed marriage and the affair that caused it to end, she might live with the doubt that her parents were right all along. This makes her decision and altercation with her parents even worse. Reconciling when you know you were wrong is harder than forgiving the person who wronged you.

The Kids’ Perspective

There are personal fears and  traumas of the kids . Tyler, in his childish naivete, is convinced that his father left because he was disappointed in him as a son. Tyler tells Becca that he froze during one game he played, which disappointed his dad so much that he had to leave. While this sounds ridiculous to any adult (and even Becca), it’s a matter of fact to Tyler. As a result of this trauma, Tyler also developed germaphobia. In Becca’s own words, this gives him a greater sense of control.

On the other hand,  Becca refuses to look at herself in the mirror  or stand in front of the camera if she can help it. Both kids  had to overcome their fears to survive , which is a solid and clear metaphor for how these things sometimes turn out in real life.

Frequently Asked Questions Answered

The visit: what’s wrong with the grandparents who are the grandparents.

The people who hosted Becca and Tyler were runaway psychiatric hospital patients who murdered the real grandparents and took their place. Nana’s impostor (Claire) was actually responsible for murdering her children by drowning them in a well. Pop Pop’s impostor (Mitchell) wanted to give Claire a second chance at having kids / being a grandparent.

How did the imposter grandparents know about the kids’ visit?

It appears Claire and Mitchell hear the real Nana and Pop Pop brag about their grandkids’ visit. They also learned that neither the grandparents nor the kids had seen each other. The real grandparents appear to have been consulting in the same hospital Claire and Mitchell were being treated. The two crazies take this opportunity to break out, kill the real grandparents and go to the station to pick up the children.

The Visit: What is Sinmorfitellia?

Claire and Mitchell believe that Sinmorfitellia is an alien planet, and the creatures from there lurk on Earth. They spit into the waters of wells and ponds all day, which can put people into a deep sleep. They take  sleeping with the fishes  quite literally. Long ago, Claire drowned her children believing they would go to Sinmorfitellia.

The Visit: What happened to the real grandparents?

Claire and Mitchel killed Nana and Pop Pop and put them in the basement. This information went unnoticed because Becca’s laptop’s camera was damaged by Nana, so Loretta could not confirm the imposters. Claire and Mitchel were not present every time someone came to visit, so no one suspected foul play except Stacey, who received help from the real grandparents. As a result, she is killed.

What did Claire and Mitchel intend to do?

They plan to go to Sinmorfitellia with Becca and Tyler. They all plan to die on that last night and enter the well, which they believe is their path to the alien planet where they can be happy together. This is perhaps why the grandparents hang Stacey outside the house because they don’t care about being caught.

The Visit: What’s wrong with Nana?

We don’t know what caused Nana’s mental illness, but she was crazy enough to kill her two children by putting them in suitcases and drowning them in a pond. It appears she suffers from schizophrenia as she has delusions.

The Visit: Wrap Up

From the standpoint of horror, The Visit has it all. An unnerving realistic scenario, real-life trauma, and an atmosphere of fear. Combine this with  some of the best acting work in the genre  and a documentary-style movie, and you’ve got yourself a real masterpiece.

On the downside, the movie leaves you with a lot of open questions like:

• Considering the kids have never seen the grandparents and are going alone, Loretta didn’t ensure her kids knew what her parents looked like?
• How are Claire and Mitchell out and about so close to the hospital without being caught?
• Considering they are mentally ill, how did Claire and Mitchell plot such a thorough plan? (e.g. strategically damaging the camera of the laptop)
• I understand  Suspension Of Disbelief  in horror films, but neither kids drop their cameras despite the terror they go through only so we, the audience, can get the entire narrative?

What were your thoughts on the plot and ending of the movie The Visit? Drop your comments below!

Stacey is a talented freelance writer passionate about all things pop culture. She has a keen eye for detail and a natural talent for storytelling. She’s a super-fan of Game of Thrones, Cats, and Indie Rock Music and can often be found engrossed in complex films and books. Connect with her on her social media handles to learn more about her work and interests.

Movie Reviews

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M. Night Shyamalan had his heyday almost 20 years ago. He leapt out of the gate with such confidence he became a champion instantly. And then...something went awry. He became embarrassingly self-serious, his films drowning in pretension and strained allegories. His famous twists felt like a director attempting to re-create the triumph of " The Sixth Sense ," where the twist of the film was so successfully withheld from audiences that people went back to see the film again and again. But now, here comes " The Visit ," a film so purely entertaining that you almost forget how scary it is. With all its terror, "The Visit" is an extremely funny film. 

There are too many horror cliches to even list ("gotcha" scares, dark basements, frightened children, mysterious sounds at night, no cellphone reception), but the main cliche is that it is a "found footage" film, a style already wrung dry. But Shyamalan injects adrenaline into it, as well as a frank admission that, yes, it is a cliche, and yes, it is absurd that one would keep filming in moments of such terror, but he uses the main strength of found footage: we are trapped by the perspective of the person holding the camera. Withhold visual information, lull the audience into safety, then turn the camera, and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT? 

"The Visit" starts quietly, with Mom ( Kathryn Hahn ) talking to the camera about running away from home when she was 19: her parents disapproved of her boyfriend. She had two kids with this man who recently left them all for someone new. Mom has a brave demeanor, and funny, too, referring to her kids as "brats" but with mama-bear affection. Her parents cut ties with her, but now they have reached out  from their snowy isolated farm and want to know their grandchildren. Mom packs the two kids off on a train for a visit.

Shyamalan breaks up the found footage with still shots of snowy ranks of trees, blazing sunsets, sunrise falling on a stack of logs. There are gigantic blood-red chapter markers: "TUESDAY MORNING", etc. These choices launch us into the overblown operatic horror style while commenting on it at the same time. It ratchets up the dread.

Becca ( Olivia DeJonge ) and Tyler ( Ed Oxenbould ) want to make a film about their mother's lost childhood home, a place they know well from all of her stories. Becca has done her homework about film-making, and instructs her younger brother about "frames" and "mise-en-scène." Tyler, an appealing gregarious kid, keeps stealing the camera to film the inside of his mouth and his improvised raps. Becca sternly reminds him to focus. 

The kids are happy to meet their grandparents. They are worried about the effect their grandparents' rejection had on their mother (similar to Cole's worry about his mother's unfinished business with her own parent in "The Sixth Sense"). Becca uses a fairy-tale word to explain what she wants their film to do — it will be an "elixir" to bring home to Mom. 

Nana ( Deanna Dunagan ), at first glance, is a Grandma out of a storybook, with a grey bun, an apron, and muffins coming out of the oven every hour. Pop Pop ( Peter McRobbie ) is a taciturn farmer who reminds the kids constantly that he and Nana are "old." 

But almost immediately, things get crazy. What is Pop Pop doing out in the barn all the time? Why does Nana ask Becca to clean the oven, insisting that she crawl all the way in ? What are those weird sounds at night from outside their bedroom door? They have a couple of Skype calls with Mom, and she reassures them their grandparents are "weird" but they're also old, and old people are sometimes cranky, sometimes paranoid. 

As the weirdness intensifies, Becca and Tyler's film evolves from an origin-story documentary to a mystery-solving investigation. They sneak the camera into the barn, underneath the house, they place it on a cabinet in the living room overnight, hoping to get a glimpse of what happens downstairs after they go to bed. What they see is more than they (and we) bargained for.

Dunagan and McRobbie play their roles with a melodramatic relish, entering into the fairy-tale world of the film. And the kids are great, funny and distinct. Tyler informs his sister that he wants to stop swearing so much, and instead will say the names of female pop singers. The joke is one that never gets old. He falls, and screams, "Sarah McLachlan!" When terrified, he whispers to himself, " Katy Perry ... " Tyler, filming his sister, asks her why she never looks in the mirror. "Your sweater is on backwards." As he grills her, he zooms in on her, keeping her face off-center, blurry grey-trunked trees filling most of the screen. The blur is the mystery around them. Cinematographer Maryse Alberti creates the illusion that the film is being made by kids, but also avoids the nauseating hand-held stuff that dogs the found-footage style.

When the twist comes, and you knew it was coming because Shyamalan is the director, it legitimately shocks. Maybe not as much as "The Sixth Sense" twist, but it is damn close. (The audience I saw it with gasped and some people screamed in terror.) There are references to " Halloween ", "Psycho" (Nana in a rocking chair seen from behind), and, of course, " Paranormal Activity "; the kids have seen a lot of movies, understand the tropes and try to recreate them themselves. 

"The Visit" represents Shyamalan cutting loose, lightening up, reveling in the improvisational behavior of the kids, their jokes, their bickering, their closeness. Horror is very close to comedy. Screams of terror often dissolve into hysterical laughter, and he uses that emotional dovetail, its tension and catharsis, in almost every scene. The film is ridiculous  on so many levels, the story playing out like the most monstrous version of Hansel & Gretel imaginable, and in that context, "ridiculous" is the highest possible praise.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Visit (2015)

Rated PG-13 disturbing thematic material including terror, violence and some nudity, and for brief language

Kathryn Hahn as Mother

Ed Oxenbould as Tyler Jamison

Benjamin Kanes as Dad

Peter McRobbie as Pop-Pop

Olivia DeJonge as Rebecca Jamison

Deanna Dunagan as Nana

• M. Night Shyamalan

Cinematography

• Maryse Alberti
• Luke Franco Ciarrocch

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What's wrong with Grandma?

The Big Picture

• In M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit , the main characters discover that the grandparents they are staying with are actually dangerous imposters.
• The twist is revealed when the children's mother realizes that the people claiming to be their grandparents are strangers who have assumed their identities.
• The climax of the film involves a tense and dangerous confrontation between the children and the imposters, resulting in the reveal of the true identities of the grandparents.

M. Night Shyamalan is considered a master at delivering drop-your-popcorn-level twisty conclusions to his haunting films. People still talk about the end of The Sixth Sense as perhaps one of the greatest twists in the history of modern cinema. The jaw-dropper at the end of Unbreakable ranks close to the top as well. But there is another pretty decent curveball that the director tosses up in a lesser-known movie that is currently streaming on Max. In 2016's The Visit (which is currently streaming on Max ) he plays on the hallowed relationship between children and their doting grandparents. How could Shyamalan toy with the innocence of this? It is an excellent film that deftly blends found footage with the director's signature slow-burning tension to leave audiences with yet another "WTF?" moment . Let's dig into what exactly happens at the end of his underrated movie, The Visit .

Two siblings become increasingly frightened by their grandparents' disturbing behavior while visiting them on vacation.

What is 'The Visit' About?

Young Becca Jamison ( Olivia DeJonge ) and little brother Tyler ( Ed Oxenbould ) are sent away by their divorced mother Loretta ( Kathryn Hahn ) to finally meet and spend some time with their grandparents , Frederick, or Pop Pop ( Peter McRobbie ), and Maria, better known as Nana ( Deanna Dunagan ). They have a nice rural estate away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and it feels like this is going to be a heartwarming story of two generations of the Jamisons getting to know each other. It seems a bit odd that these two preteens have yet to meet their maternal grandparents, but Shyamalan explains that nicely in the first few scenes: Loretta has had a years-long falling out with her parents after leaving the family farm at the age of 19.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Eerie Found Footage Horror Movie Deserves Another Look

Loretta is still estranged from her parents but she wants her children to have a relationship with them — she only wants to go on a cruise with her new boyfriend and needs someone to watch the kids. So, the children have no idea what their Nana and Pop Pop actually look like. And you can feel something amiss from the very beginning of the film as the two precocious but excited kids set off to meet their grandparents. The entire film is told through the kids' (mainly Becca, an aspiring filmmaker) camcorder, as they have decided to document their trip. It's clear right away that Becca resents her father as a result of his abandonment, as she refuses to include any footage of her dad in her film.

Shyamalan Expertly Builds Tension in 'The Visit'

Upon the kids' arrival, Nana and Pop Pop seem like regular grandparents with regular questions like, "Do you like sports?" and "Why are your pants so low?" Nana tends to the chores like cooking and cleaning while Pop Pop handles the more rugged work outdoors like cutting wood. Naturally, Shyamalan tightens the screws immediately when the audience discovers that there is little to no cell phone reception, so he can isolate our four players into a single space. The Grandparents seem fairly easygoing but they have one strict rule — the kids must not come out of their bedroom after 9:30 pm. The very first night, Nana exhibits some bizarre behavior, walking aimlessly through the downstairs portion of the house and vomiting on the floor. However, the next morning she seems to be just fine.

Pop Pop explains to Becca and Tyler that she suffers from "sundowning" which is a very real diagnosis that usually affects the elderly . He tells them that at night Nana gets this feeling that something is in her body and just wants to get out. Pop Pop is clear and coherent, and yet again, we, along with our two young lead characters, assume the grandparents, while odd, are nothing to fear. A Zoom call with Loretta further assuages their fear by explaining away all the strange behavior as part of getting older. It's a back-and-forth that Shyamalan expertly navigates by pushing the audience only so far before reeling it back in with a logical explanation. But soon, things become inexplicably dire and dangerous.

"What's in the shed?" Tyler asks as he looks into the camera while contributing to Becca's documentary . "Is it dead bodies?" What he discovers is a pile of used, discarded adult diapers filled with Pop Pop's excrement. The smell sends Tyler reeling, and he falls out of the shed onto the snowy ground. This time, it's Nana who explains away Pop Pop's odd behavior. She tells her grandson that Pop Pop has incontinence and is so proud that he hides his waste in the shed. At this point, everything seems very odd to say the least, but there is nothing to suggest anything sinister is afoot . Not yet anyway. Even after he attacks a random stranger who he believes is watching him out on the streets on a trip into town, you still just think that maybe Pop Pop may just have a loose screw. However, the sense that these elderly people are something more than doting parents is intensified when Nana leaves Becca inside the oven for several seconds.

What Is the Twist at the End of 'The Visit'?

"Those aren't your grandparents?" Get the heck out of here! What?! Loretta finally sees the two people claiming to be her parents and tells Becca and Tyler via Skype that they aren't their beloved Nana and Pop Pop, but two complete strangers who have assumed their identities. Loretta immediately calls the police, but it will take hours for help to arrive at the remote farmhouse. Becca and Tyler are going to have to play along with these dangerous imposters. After the most tense and awkward game of Yahtzee in the history of board games, things get really, really ugly. Nana and Pop Pop haven't laid a hand on either of the kids in the movie so far. You can feel the slow and excruciating tension that Shyamalan is building . He knows that the audience is waiting for that "point of no return" moment when it is crystal clear that Becca and Tyler's lives are in danger. Becca manages to escape to the basement to discover the dead bodies of two elderly people murdered. Nana and Pop Pop are escaped mental patients from the nearby psychiatric hospital and have killed the real Jamison grandparents.

What Happens at the End of 'The Visit'?

Pop Pop realizes their cover is blown and becomes physical with Becca. He's upset that Becca is ruining Nana's perfect week as a grandmother. He tells her, "We're all dying today, Becca!" pushing her into a pitch-black upstairs room. Meanwhile, he grabs Tyler and takes him into the kitchen, and does one of the most foul and stomach-turning things ever in a Shyamalan film . He takes his used diaper and shoves it in the boy's face. He knows that Tyler is a germaphobe, and it is the most diabolical and traumatizing thing he could do to the boy. Becca is trapped upstairs with the sundowning Nana, fighting for her own life. After a struggle, Becca grasps a shard of glass from the broken mirror and is able to stab Nana multiple times in the gut.

She breaks the lock on the door and runs downstairs to help Tyler. She pulls "Pop Pop" off her traumatized younger brother. Suddenly, Tyler snaps out of his stupor and releases the pent-up anger of his football tackling lessons with his estranged father. He knocks Pop Pop to the ground and slams the refrigerator door on his head over and over . This is significant because earlier in the movie, Becca ribs Tyler about how he froze up during a big play in a youth football game, and this time he comes through to save Becca in the final kitchen scene conquering his biggest fears.

Loretta and the police arrive and the kids run frantically out of the house. The final scene has Loretta setting the record straight for the documentary about the traumatic moments surrounding her running away from home. 15 years before the events of the film, before Becca was born, Loretta fell out with her parents over her decision to marry her teacher. The argument led to Loretta and her parents getting physical with each other, and she left home that night and never responded to their attempts and pleas to reconnect. It's the most emotional scene in the film as Loretta is feeling a huge amount of guilt at never getting to say she was sorry for the strained relationship between her and her parents or getting to possibly hear an apology for the wrongs they also committed. Loretta tells Becca "Don't hold on to anger! You hear me?" The two then share a meaningful embrace. And the final shot is of the two kids with their dad on a birthday when they were much younger.

The Visit is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

Watch on Max

Screen Rant

The visit ending explained: is the m. night shyamalan movie based on a true story.

M. Night Shyamalan's twist-filled 2015 shocker The Visit had audiences guessing until the very end, but is the found footage horror film a true story?

• "The Visit" is a twist-filled thriller that earned its scares through a plausible story and clever use of found footage genre.
• Despite being eerily plausible, "The Visit" is actually a work of pure fiction and not based on a true story.
• The film explores themes of aging, fear, and generational trauma, while also highlighting the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation.

M. Night Shyamalan's twist-filled thriller The Visit kept viewers guessing all the way up to the shocking conclusion, but is the found footage horror hit based on a true story? Released in 2015, The Visit follows teen siblings Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) as they are sent to spend a week with their estranged grandparents. Naturally, strange things are afoot, and the teens must learn the shocking truth about their relatives. As with all of Shyamalan's horror movies, The Visit built up to a shocking twist that many didn't see coming, but it cleverly incorporated humor in a way that left many perplexed by its tone.

Despite a largely mixed critical reaction (via Rotten Tomatoes ), The Visit was a bona fide financial success (via Box Office Mojo ) and it stands as one of M. Night Shyamalan's highest-grossing movies . Unlike many of Shyamalan's other films which incorporate fantastical elements, The Visit earned its scares by being an entirely plausible story. Visually speaking, Shyamalan used the found footage genre deftly to convey a deeper meaning, and he got genuinely creepy moments from what could have easily been goofy. The compelling mix of plausibility and realism had many wondering whether The Visit was actually based on a true story.

Every Character M. Night Shyamalan Played In His Own Movies

The visit is not based on a true story.

Despite being eerily plausible, The Visit was actually a work of pure fiction and had no connection to real life. The script was penned by M. Night Shyamalan himself, with many of the movie's more positive reviews calling it a return to his former glory. Nearly all the writer/director's films have been works of his own imagination and in an interview with Geeks of Doom he said " That is the primal thing of it, that we are scared of getting old. Playing on that is a powerful conceit ". The director would return to that theme a few years later in 2021's Old but to a less effective extent.

The Grandparents Twist Explained

Throughout the film, Becca and Tyler are unsure about the behavior of their Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) and Nana (Deana Dunagan), who have seemingly grown worse as the story progresses. Obviously, something wasn't right about the elderly couple, but the pieces finally clicked when Becca discovered the remains of her real grandparents stashed away in the basement. It is revealed that Pop Pop and Nana are actually escaped patients from the local mental health facility and that they have killed Becca and Tyler's grandparents to assume their lives. It is unclear whether the two escapees would have posed a threat to the kids if they hadn't nosed around.

If there is one thing that the multi-talented Shyamalan is best known for it is his films' abundant use of shocking twists towards the end of his stories. Nearly every M. Night Shyamalan twist has kept audiences guessing, and The Visit was unique because it truly earned its shocking climax. Unlike earlier films which stuck a twist in just to fulfill the obligation, The Visit naturally built towards the twist, and it was a crucial part of the plot, unlike so many throw-away gimmick twists of the past.

Why The Visit Is A Found Footage Movie

Thanks to blockbuster horror hits like Paranormal Activity , the found footage genre started to expand in earnest at the beginning of the 2010s. However, by 2015 and the release of The Visit , the style had largely fallen out of favor. Despite this downturn in popularity, The Visit nevertheless opted for an approach that innovated the found footage tropes by injecting a bit of humor and eschewing the self-serious tone. From a story perspective, The Visit is a found footage movie because it is about Becca's quest to chronicle her family for a documentary, but the choice actually goes deeper.

Unlike other directors who chose found footage as a cheap way to save on the movie's budget, Shyamalan intellectualized the style by making it crucial to the plot. In the same Geeks of Doom interview, the director mentioned " The camera is an extension of those characters...It is manifesting in literal cinematography in this particular movie ". Additionally, Becca's abundant camera usage actually factors into the plot, such as when she shows the footage to her mother, which further integrates it into the fabric of the film.

The First "Found Footage" Movie Came 38 Years Before The Blair Witch Project

The significance of tyler’s phobias.

Horror movies are all about exploiting common phobias , and The Visit used Tyler's irrational fears as a chance to spook viewers and say something about the themes as well. Tyler is shown to be a bit of a germaphobe, and he also has a fear of freezing to death. While both have rational elements and point back to the omnipresent fear of death from which all phobias stem, Tyler's fears also speak to the idea that the elderly are frightening because they are reminders of death. The slow degradation of the body through aging is a lot like freezing to death, and it is clear that Tyler sees his elderly grandparents as unclean which activates his germ phobia.

The hilariously gruesome scene in which Pop Pop rubs his dirty adult diaper in Tyler's face forces the younger man to confront his fears, and it empowers him later when he finally dispatches the imposter grandpa. It is likely not a coincidence that Tyler kills Pop Pop by slamming his head in the refrigerator, as the ice box is an extension of Tyler's fear of freezing. He literally kills his tormentor with a symbol of the thing that mentally torments him.

How Loretta’s Past Affected The Kids

At the beginning of the film, Becca and Tyler's mom Loretta (Kathryn Hahn) explains that she hasn't spoken to her parents in 15 years because she eloped with one of her high school teachers when she was only a teenager. Instead of facing her problems like an adult, Loretta instead allowed her kids to act as a bridge between the generations, inadvertently sending them to live with two violent escapees from the local mental health ward. Loretta would later reveal that Nana and Pop Pop aren't her parents in one of Shyamalan's most terrifying scares , but she was away on a cruise and couldn't come to their aid.

This forces her kids to mature faster than she ever could, and they go on the offense as they are tasked with escaping from the murderous impostors occupying their grandparent's home. At the end of the film, Loretta explains her last interaction with her parents turned violent, which sheds a bit of light on why she couldn't just face up to the past. In some ways, Loretta's choices as a teenager eventually led to the precarious situation that Becca and Tyler ended up in, and she passed a bit of generational trauma on to them.

Why Becca Puts Her Father In The Documentary

Having survived the harrowing ordeal, Becca's documentary finally begins to take shape at the very end of The Visit . She is given the chance to cut in footage of her estranged father, and though Loretta informs her she doesn't have to, Becca opts to put him in. This choice shows that Becca has matured significantly since the titular visit, and she has come to the realization that forgiveness really is the best path. Loretta could never forgive her parents, and it robbed her of a chance for reconciliation. By putting her dad in the documentary, Becca left that door open for her future self and maybe her own children too.

How Many M. Night Shyamalan Movies REALLY Have Twists

The real meaning of the visit’s ending.

From a horror perspective, the ending of The Visit is all about the fear of death as personified by the elderly. Nana and Pop Pop are terrifying embodiments of the eventual degradation of the body, though they also fill the role of the conventional horror antagonist. However, from a more thematic side, The Visit is also about forgiveness and reconciliation, as the harboring of deep-seated pain can eventually lead to a bad outcome. Even if it isn't literally an encounter with escaped murderers, it is at least a path of nothing but pain and loss.

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Watch The Visit with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

The Visit provides horror fans with a satisfying blend of thrills and laughs -- and also signals a welcome return to form for writer-director M. Night Shyamalan.

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M. Night Shyamalan

Olivia DeJonge

Ed Oxenbould

Deanna Dunagan

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Kathryn Hahn

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• Horror films
• American fantasy films
• Films directed by M. Night Shyamalan
• Found Footage films
• 2010s films
• Rated PG-13
• View history

The Visit is a 2015 American "found footage" style horror-fantasy written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan , and produced by Shyamalan, Jason Blum, Marc Bienstock, Steven Schneider, and Ashwin Rajan.

The film stars Kathryn Hahn, Ed Oxenbould, Peter McRobbie, and Benjamin Kanes. It was released vis Universal Pictures on September 11, 2015.

• 3.1 Trailers
• 3.2 Reviews
• 5 References

Philadelphia teens, 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her 13-year-old brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), prepare for a five-day visit with their maternal grandparents while their divorced mother, Loretta Jamison (Kathryn Hahn) goes on a cruise with her new boyfriend.

The two kids (who have never met their grandparents) intend to film a documentary about their visit. Loretta reveals that she has not spoken to her parents in fifteen years after having married her high-school teacher Corin, of whom her parents disapproved.

The father of Becca and Tyler, Corin left Loretta after ten years for another woman. Loretta tells Becca little about the disagreement she had with her parents that led to their estrangement, suggesting that Becca ask them for the details instead.

Becca and Tyler meet their grandparents (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie), who Becca refers to as "Nana" and "Pop Pop". At the isolated farmhouse, Becca and Tyler are instructed to never go into the basement because it contains toxic mold, and that bedtime is 9:30 p.m.

An hour past curfew, Becca ventures downstairs for something to eat and sees Nana projectile vomiting, frightening her. She tells Pop Pop, who dismisses it as Nana having the stomach flu. He reminds her not to leave the room after 9:30.

Over the next few days, Becca and Tyler notice their grandparents exhibiting more strange, sometimes frightening behavior. Pop Pop keeps mentioning a white light he sees. When Becca asks Nana about what happened the day Loretta left home, Nana begins shaking and screaming. Pop Pop and Nana are later confronted by a woman who was helped by them in counseling; she goes into the backyard with them but is never seen leaving.

Tyler (concerned about the occurrences) decides to secretly film what happens downstairs at night. Nana discovers the hidden camera, retrieves a large knife and unsuccessfully tries to break into the children's locked bedroom.

When Becca and Tyler view the camera footage of Nana with the knife, they contact their mother via Skype, begging her to come get them. When shown images of Pop Pop and Nana, Loretta panics upon the realization that they are not her parents.

Becca and Tyler attempt to leave the house and end up seeing the woman from earlier hung from a nearby tree. The impostors then trap them and force them to play Yahtzee. Becca sneaks to the basement, where she finds the corpses of the real Pop Pop and Nana, along with uniforms from the mental hospital they worked at, indicating the impostors are escaped patients.

Pop Pop grabs Becca and imprisons her in his bedroom with Nana, who tries to eat her. Becca fatally stabs Nana with a glass shard from a broken mirror, then tries to save Tyler. The Pop Pop imposter reveals to Tyler that the plan was to have a wonderful week "as a family" before dying so that they could reach the white light together.

After Becca's attempts to hold back Pop Pop, Tyler tackles Pop Pop to the floor and repeatedly slams the refrigerator door on his head, killing him. The two escape outside where they are met by their incoming mother and police officers.

In the aftermath, Becca asks Loretta about what happened the day she left home. Loretta states that she had a fight with her parents in which she hit her mother. After that, she left home and ignored their attempts to contact her. Loretta concludes that reconciliation was always possible had she wanted it. She tells Becca not to hold on to anger over her father's abandonment.

• Olivia DeJonge as Becca
• Ed Oxenbould as Tyler
• Kathryn Hahn as Loretta Jamison
• Deanna Dunagan as "Nana"\Maria Bella Jamison
• Peter McRobbie as "Pop Pop"\Frederick Spencer Jamison
• Benjamin Kanes as Corin
• Celia Keenan-Bolger as Stacey
• Jon Douglas Rainey, Brian Gildea, Shawn Gonzalez, and Richard Barlow as police
• Erica Lynne Marszalek and Shawn Gonzalez as passengers on a train
• Michael Mariano as a hairy-chested contestant

Trailers [ ]

Reviews [ ].

References [ ]

• 1 DreamWorks Home Entertainment/Gallery

The Visit (2015) Stream and Watch Online

Watch 'the visit' online.

Want to watch ' The Visit ' in the comfort of your own home? Finding a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or watch the M. Night Shyamalan-directed movie via subscription can be a challenge, so we here at Moviefone want to help you out. Below, you'll find a number of top-tier streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription choices - along with the availability of 'The Visit' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into all the details of how you can watch 'The Visit' right now, here are some particulars about the Blumhouse Productions, Blinding Edge Pictures, Universal Pictures, dentsu horror flick. Released September 11th, 2015, 'The Visit' stars Olivia DeJonge , Ed Oxenbould , Deanna Dunagan , Peter McRobbie The PG-13 movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 34 min, and received a user score of 63 (out of 100) on TMDb, which compiled reviews from 4,531 well-known users. Want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "A brother and sister are sent to their grandparents' remote Pennsylvania farm for a week, where they discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing." 'The Visit' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on Vudu, Amazon Video, HBO Max Amazon Channel, Max , Apple iTunes, Cinemax Apple TV Channel, YouTube, Cinemax Amazon Channel, AMC on Demand, Microsoft Store, Spectrum On Demand, and Google Play Movies .

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M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit Ending, Explained

M. Night Shyamalan's horror movies often include a fun twist, and his 2016 release The Visit has a compelling ending with one of the coolest reveals.

M. Night Shyamalan's twist endings are the hallmark of his career, and his 2015 movie The Visit has one of the most exciting ones. Olivia DeJonge, beloved for playing Ashley in the twisted Christmas horror film Better Watch Out, stars as Becca, a teenage girl who stays with her grandparents alongside her brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould). What should be a fun and peaceful family vacation becomes a perplexing and mysterious nightmare and the teenagers must scramble to discover the dark and haunting truth.

The M. Night Shyamalan horror movie has an exciting ending that shifts the audience's perception of the story, proving once again that the filmmaker is great at providing surprising moments that no one sees coming. The final scenes of The Visit make this one of the most unnerving horror movies of the 2010s.

RELATED: Signs: Joaquin Phoenix’s Character is a Perfect Metaphor for M. Night Shyamalan's Filmmaking

What Happens At The End Of The Visit, And What Is The Twist Ending?

Becca falls into the final girl horror movie trope when she makes an important discovery that is key to the ending of The Visit . When she discovers the dead bodies of her and Ed's grandparents, she also sees uniforms from the hospital where they were employed. This helps her see that "Nana" and "Pop Pop" were patients who ran away, killed their grandparents, and pretended to be them. This is a huge plot twist that was hard to see coming.

The satisfying horror movie ending has the siblings fighting back, but the final scenes are tense and scary, and their survival never feels like a guarantee. Pop Pop locks Becca in her room and hurts Tyler, but Tyler kills Pop Pop and Becca kills Nana. The teenagers are able to get away and talk to the police about what just happened.

The Visit ending works on two levels: a fast-paced, thrilling example of a good horror movie plot twist and also an emotional story about family bonds and problems. Becca and her mom Loretta (Kathryn Hayn) have a tough conversation about how Loretta never talked to her parents after a fight 15 years prior. Loretta wants Becca to stop feeling anger about her own dad's decision to leave the family behind, and the two characters share a sweet moment that helps Becca move forward.

This adds an extra layer to the movie and makes Becca a more fully formed character. It also makes both Becca and Ed feel real since they may be dealing with this out-of-this-world situation, but they are also regular teenagers who feel the pain of a parent who doesn't show them the love that they deserve. While Shyamalan's movie Old is a bad adaptation , The Visit shares that sometimes, it can be difficult to get along with family and it can be tough to move on from past hurts. The movie may have a fun and flashy twist, but it has some deep moments as well that can't be ignored.

How Does This Twist Compare To Others In M. Night Shyamalan Horror Movies?

The Visit ending has one of the best and most unpredictable horror movie plot twists , which makes sense given M. Night Shyamalan's reputation for having shocking moments in most of his films. When comparing the reveal of the identity of "Nana" and "Pop Pop," it's fun to think about the other big reveals in the filmmaker's career. Of course, the standard will always be the twist in the important horror movie The Sixth Sense when it turns out that Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is actually dead and that's one reason for his sweet bond with Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment).

The twist at the end of The Visit might not be quite as stunning as the one in The Sixth Sense , which will always be one of the best horror movie plot twists as it creates such a compelling atmosphere of shock and awe.

However, The Visit still has a fresh and different ending and the final scenes prove the strong character development of the movie. At first, Pop Pop and Nana seem perfectly normal and innocent, and no one would think that grandparents would be evil. And even when Becca and Ed start noticing weird things, it's hard to think that these characters might not be who they are claiming to be. That would mean that they are truly evil and diabolical, and they seem so naive.

The Visit twist ending also works because it's so creepy. Like Pearl (Mia Goth) and Howard (Stephen Ure) in X and Pearl , the patients lying about their identities are definitely unsettling. The movies make sure that the characters are odd and mysterious, but they never seem like they could be killers until audiences finally see them causing havoc.

NEXT: 5 Nonsensical Plot Twists In Horror Movies

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The Visit streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "The Visit" streaming on Max, Max Amazon Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel, Cinemax Apple TV Channel. It is also possible to buy "The Visit" on AMC on Demand, Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft Store as download or rent it on Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft Store, Spectrum On Demand online.

Where does The Visit rank today? The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

Streaming charts last updated: 5:27:50 AM, 05/01/2024

The Visit is 1613 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 474 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than All Gone Wrong but less popular than Anguish.

A brother and sister are sent to their grandparents' remote Pennsylvania farm for a week, where they discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing.

Videos: Trailers, Teasers, Featurettes

Streaming Charts The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

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Watch The Visit

• 1 hr 34 min
• 6.2   (148,298)

The Visit is a 2015 horror-comedy movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan, featuring an impressive cast, including Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, and Deanna Dunagan. The film follows the story of siblings, Rebecca and Tyler, who are sent to their grandparents' farmhouse for a week, while their mother goes on a cruise with her boyfriend. The kids have never met their grandparents because their mother had a fallout with them about 15 years ago and has been estranged ever since.

Initially, the visit seems like a fun and exciting adventure for the siblings. However, as the days progress, strange things start happening in the farmhouse, and Rebecca and Tyler become convinced that their grandparents are not who they claim to be. The characters begin to uncover a terrifying secret about their grandparents' true nature.

Throughout the movie, The Visit manages to walk the line between comedy and terror flawlessly. The writing is excellent, with well-timed humorous scenes to lighten the atmosphere before launching back into atmospheric horror. The film also provides an intelligent commentary on the human condition and how we can suppress dark parts of our past.

The acting in the movie is top-notch. Olivia DeJonge plays Rebecca with an impressive depth, portraying the character as mature and responsible while also revealing the hidden fears and anxieties that plague her.

Ed Oxenbould is excellent in the role of Tyler, providing much-needed comic relief in tense situations while also delivering a well-crafted performance that adds depth to the character.

Deanna Dunagan, who plays the grandmother, delivers a chilling performance. She is undoubtedly the star of the movie, providing one of the most memorable horror performances in recent years.

In conclusion, The Visit is a terrifying, yet entertaining movie with a fantastic story, great acting, and clever writing. It manages to find the perfect balance between humor and horror, leaving audiences gripping their seats until the very end. The Visit is a must-watch for any horror movie fan. Watch The Visit Online for an unforgettable experience.

The Visit is a 2015 horror movie with a runtime of 1 hour and 34 minutes. It has received moderate reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 6.2 and a MetaScore of 55.

• Genres Horror Mystery Thriller
• Cast Olivia DeJonge Ed Oxenbould Deanna Dunagan
• Director M. Night Shyamalan
• Release Date 2015
• MPAA Rating PG-13
• Runtime 1 hr 34 min
• Language English
• IMDB Rating 6.2   (148,298)
• Metascore 55

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Alternate Ending

Deleted scenes, the making of the visit, becca's photos, rotten tomatoes® score.

The Visit is a return to form for Shyamalan.

While Shyamalan doesn’t reinvent the wheel with “The Visit”, he does show the creative flourishes that made him a respected name and overnight success in the horror-thriller genre.

It’s all a very transparent metaphor for family reconciliation and what happens when your old wounds don’t heal.

This would be a perfect movie to kind of study because it's written really, really well and the scripting and dialogue and just the overall story structure is perfect.

M. Night Shyamalan needed people to be on his side. Thankfully, with The Visit, a found footage horror movie with more than its share of humor, he finally got me back on his side.

Shyamalan's made a lot of terrible films in a career singularly set with The Sixth Sense, but makes a decent rebound here.

The Visit is one freaky found footage frightfest.

The fear of 'The visit' is something very real, it is fear of abandonment, of not being loved. A fear far superior, by its authenticity, to any created fiction. [Full Review in Spanish]

We all know that comedy and horror are close to each other, so much so that screams can quickly transform into laughter. Shyamalan remembers this...

Shyamalan recaptures some of his earlier essence with lots of mystery, subtle creeps and moments where you'll question what exactly it is you're seeing.

Additional Info

• Genre : Horror, Thriller
• Release Date : September 11, 2015
• Languages : English
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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The Surprise Visit (2022): What is the True Story Behind the Film?

As ‘The Surprise Visit’ unfolds, Annabelle and Casey grapple with their drug addiction, realizing the need for a fresh start as they anticipate becoming parents. Faced with financial challenges, the couple decides to overcome their substance abuse, driven by a desperate desire to provide a stable and nurturing environment for their unborn child. In a twist of fate, Casey discovers that Mrs. Dixon, his father’s employer, will be out of town for the weekend.

Faced with financial struggles and a desire for a fresh start, Casey proposes a risky plan to Annabelle—to commit a robbery as their final act of desperation. They intend to secure enough resources to embark on a new life for their unborn child, steering away from the challenges of their current circumstances. Directed by Nick Lyon, the story of the 2022 movie explores the lengths people go to when pushed to the brink and delves into the moral and ethical complexities surrounding their choices.

The Surprise Visit is Inspired by Real Events

The writers of ‘The Surprise Visit,’ Nathan Cowles, Andrew Fein, and Serah Henesey, drew inspiration from a true story connected to Serah Henesey’s husband, Nathan Cowles’ family homestead, which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tale reportedly revolves around the previous owner, also named Mrs. Dixon, who, after being widowed, left her property to visit her sister for the weekend. During her absence, the housekeeper, Eric Roberts, unknowingly shared the information with her drug-addicted son and his girlfriend about the vacant house.

Learning of their pregnancy, the couple attempted to rob the residence. However, the unexpected arrival of Mrs. Dixon’s daughter and son-in-law on the same night led to their apprehension, mirroring the film’s theme of desperate actions with unexpected consequences. ‘The Surprise Visit’ masterfully captures the raw and unforgiving realities of addiction, providing an unfiltered glimpse into the tumultuous lives of individuals ensnared in the clutches of substance abuse and economic hardship.

With a keen eye for authenticity, the film explores the complex relationship between addiction and poverty, exposing the vulnerabilities that drive individuals to make desperate and often misguided decisions. Annabelle and Casey’s journey becomes a reflection point for the societal challenges surrounding substance abuse, shedding light on the relentless cycle of struggle and the profound consequences it inflicts upon those entangled in its grip. Drug addiction in the country remains a pervasive issue that affects individuals, families, and communities across the nation.

The country grapples with a multifaceted crisis involving a range of substances, from opioids and stimulants to marijuana and alcohol. Contributing factors to the epidemic include the widespread availability of prescription painkillers, socioeconomic disparities, mental health challenges, and a lack of comprehensive addiction treatment resources. One of how the problem of addiction manifests itself is through a rise in criminal activities, and the movie has been able to bring this conversation to the forefront.

The film draws a significant dose of reality from its carefully chosen shooting locations. Much of the filming took place in a secluded area on the outskirts of Virginia, providing the actors and the creative team with an immersive environment. This isolation mirrored the experiences of the characters in the movie, creating not only a captivating cinematographic journey that enhances the horror elements but also an authenticity that resonates with the script and the overall backdrop of the film. The deliberate selection of these locations contributes to the film’s ability to evoke a genuine sense of despair and desperation.

Director Nick Lyon and actor Serah Henesey acknowledge the deliberate Hollywoodization of the true story that served as the inspiration for their film’s universe. While certain elements, such as character names, have been altered, and fictionalized events have been introduced in the latter part of the narrative, the makers proclaim that the movie successfully maintains a sense of believability. Despite these creative liberties, the film remains an entertaining watch, blending reality and fiction to craft a film that entertains the audience.

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Based on a remarkable true story, a mum's faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold on to theirs. Based on a remarkable true story, a mum's faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold on to theirs. Based on a remarkable true story, a mum's faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold on to theirs.

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• Trivia On the last day of shooting after the concert scene for Rebecca, For King and Country put on a full concert for all the extras and crew.
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• Connections Featured in The Michael Knowles Show: God vs Hollywood: For King & Country with Michael Knowles (2024)

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Spurred by Teen Girls, States Move to Ban Deepfake Nudes

Legislators in two dozen states are working on bills, or have passed laws, to combat A.I.-generated sexually explicit images of minors.

By Natasha Singer

Natasha Singer has covered student privacy for The Times since 2013.

Caroline Mullet, a ninth grader at Issaquah High School near Seattle, went to her first homecoming dance last fall, a James Bond-themed bash with blackjack tables attended by hundreds of girls dressed up in party frocks.

A few weeks later, she and other female students learned that a male classmate was circulating fake nude images of girls who had attended the dance, sexually explicit pictures that he had fabricated using an artificial intelligence app designed to automatically “strip” clothed photos of real girls and women.

Ms. Mullet, 15, alerted her father, Mark , a Democratic Washington State senator. Although she was not among the girls in the pictures, she asked if something could be done to help her friends, who felt “extremely uncomfortable” that male classmates had seen simulated nude images of them. Soon, Senator Mullet and a colleague in the State House proposed legislation to prohibit the sharing of A.I.-generated sexually explicit depictions of real minors.

“I hate the idea that I should have to worry about this happening again to any of my female friends, my sisters or even myself,” Ms. Mullet told state lawmakers during a hearing on the bill in January.

The State Legislature passed the bill without opposition. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed it last month.

States are on the front lines of a rapidly spreading new form of peer sexual exploitation and harassment in schools. Boys across the United States have used widely available “nudification” apps to surreptitiously concoct sexually explicit images of their female classmates and then circulated the simulated nudes via group chats on apps like Snapchat and Instagram.

Now, spurred in part by troubling accounts from teenage girls like Ms. Mullet, federal and state lawmakers are rushing to enact protections in an effort to keep pace with exploitative A.I. apps.

Since early last year, at least two dozen states have introduced bills to combat A.I.-generated sexually explicit images — known as deepfakes — of people under 18, according to data compiled by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a nonprofit organization. And several states have enacted the measures.

Among them, South Dakota this year passed a law that makes it illegal to possess, produce or distribute A.I.-generated sexual abuse material depicting real minors. Last year, Louisiana enacted a deepfake law that criminalizes A.I.-generated sexually explicit depictions of minors.

“I had a sense of urgency hearing about these cases and just how much harm was being done,” said Representative Tina Orwall , a Democrat who drafted Washington State’s explicit-deepfake law after hearing about incidents like the one at Issaquah High.

Some lawmakers and child protection experts say such rules are urgently needed because the easy availability of A.I. nudification apps is enabling the mass production and distribution of false, graphic images that can potentially circulate online for a lifetime, threatening girls’ mental health, reputations and physical safety.

“One boy with his phone in the course of an afternoon can victimize 40 girls, minor girls,” said Yiota Souras , chief legal officer for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, “and then their images are out there.”

Over the last two months, deepfake nude incidents have spread in schools — including in Richmond, Ill. , and Beverly Hills and Laguna Beach , Calif.

Yet few laws in the United States specifically protect people under 18 from exploitative A.I. apps.

That is because many current statutes that prohibit child sexual abuse material or adult nonconsensual pornography — involving real photos or videos of real people — may not cover A.I.-generated explicit images that use real people’s faces, said U.S. Representative Joseph D. Morelle, a Democrat from New York.

Last year, he introduced a bill that would make it a crime to disclose A.I.-generated intimate images of identifiable adults or minors. It would also give deepfake victims, or parents, the right to sue individual perpetrators for damages.

“We want to make this so painful for anyone to even contemplate doing, because this is harm that you just can’t simply undo,” Mr. Morelle said. “Even if it seems like a prank to a 15-year-old boy, this is deadly serious.”

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another New York Democrat, recently introduced a similar bill to enable victims to bring civil cases against deepfake perpetrators.

But neither bill would explicitly give victims the right to sue the developers of A.I. nudification apps, a step that trial lawyers say would help disrupt the mass production of sexually explicit deepfakes.

“Legislation is needed to stop commercialization, which is the root of the problem,” said Elizabeth Hanley, a lawyer in Washington who represents victims in sexual assault and harassment cases.

The U.S. legal code prohibits the distribution of computer-generated child sexual abuse material depicting identifiable minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued an alert warning that such illegal material included realistic child sexual abuse images generated by A.I.

Yet fake A.I.-generated depictions of real teenage girls without clothes may not constitute “child sexual abuse material,” experts say, unless prosecutors can prove the fake images meet legal standards for sexually explicit conduct or the lewd display of genitalia.

Some defense lawyers have tried to capitalize on the apparent legal ambiguity. A lawyer defending a male high school student in a deepfake lawsuit in New Jersey recently argued that the court should not temporarily restrain his client, who had created nude A.I. images of a female classmate, from viewing or sharing the pictures because they were neither harmful nor illegal. Federal laws, the lawyer argued in a court filing, were not designed to apply “to computer-generated synthetic images that do not even include real human body parts.” (The defendant ultimately agreed not to oppose a restraining order on the images.)

Now states are working to pass laws to halt exploitative A.I. images. This month, California introduced a bill to update a state ban on child sexual abuse material to specifically cover A.I.-generated abusive material.

And Massachusetts lawmakers are wrapping up legislation that would criminalize the nonconsensual sharing of explicit images, including deepfakes. It would also require a state entity to develop a diversion program for minors who shared explicit images to teach them about issues like the “responsible use of generative artificial intelligence.”

Punishments can be severe. Under the new Louisiana law, any person who knowingly creates, distributes, promotes or sells sexually explicit deepfakes of minors can face a minimum prison sentence of five to 10 years.

In December, Miami-Dade County police officers arrested two middle school boys for allegedly making and sharing fake nude A.I. images of two female classmates, ages 12 and 13, according to police documents obtained by The New York Times through a public records request. The boys were charged with third-degree felonies under a 2022 state law prohibiting altered sexual depictions without consent. (The state attorney’s office for Miami-Dade County said it could not comment on an open case.)

The new deepfake law in Washington State takes a different approach.

After learning of the incident at Issaquah High from his daughter, Senator Mullet reached out to Representative Orwall, an advocate for sexual assault survivors and a former social worker. Ms. Orwall, who had worked on one of the state’s first revenge-porn bills, then drafted a House bill to prohibit the distribution of A.I.-generated intimate, or sexually explicit, images of either minors or adults. (Mr. Mullet, who sponsored the companion Senate bill, is now running for governor .)

Under the resulting law , first offenders could face misdemeanor charges while people with prior convictions for disclosing sexually explicit images would face felony charges. The new deepfake statute takes effect in June.

“It’s not shocking that we are behind in the protections,” Ms. Orwall said. “That’s why we wanted to move on it so quickly.”

Natasha Singer writes about technology, business and society. She is currently reporting on the far-reaching ways that tech companies and their tools are reshaping public schools, higher education and job opportunities. More about Natasha Singer

Tracing the evolution of lesbian cinema, from 'Go Fish' to 'Love Lies Bleeding'

Since the dawn of Hollywood, movies have played a prominent role in both the invisibility and visibility of lesbians. Even though the blatantly homophobic Hays Code era ended in the 1960s, it’s only been in the last 30 years that queer women have been able to be out in front of and behind the camera, quite literally showing the diversity of a community that encompasses a wide range of identities within one shared culture.

“There are little waves of momentum,” said filmmaker and historian Jenni Olson. “Being able to point to something that succeeds helps other filmmakers.”

In 2024, the fruits of lesbian labor can be seen in wide-release films like “Bottoms,” “Drive-Away Dolls” and, most recently, “Love Lies Bleeding,” but they’re just the latest in a series of moments Sapphic cinephiles are gifted once every few years. These moments started with the advent of openly lesbian films in the 1980s, with dyke bars and film festivals playing the polyamorous vampire flick “The Hunger,” the bisexual athletic drama “Personal Best” and Donna Deitch’s adaptation of Jane Rule’s 1950s divorce ranch romance “Desert Hearts” practically on a loop.

“There genuinely were not enough lesbian films,” said Olson, a former programming director at San Francisco’s Frameline LGBTQ film festival. She said lesbians got tired of being relegated to smaller theaters to watch the same films year after year, and recalled a “lesbian riot” erupting at the festival.

“The legend is that they stormed the projection booth,” Olson said, noting it led to a changing moment.

Seeking to help women and other marginalized filmmakers see their projects across the finish line, Frameline’s board brought in women like Olson to work with their gay male counterparts and launched a Completion Fund in 1990. The early ’90s was already a crucial turning point with the advent of “ new queer cinema ,” a movement celebrated by film critic B. Ruby Rich to refer to the success of emerging queer filmmakers like Todd Haynes, Isaac Julien, Tom Kalin and Gregg Araki, who were winning awards and distribution deals for their explicitly gay work.

Things didn’t change for queer women, however, until a scrappy little film out of Chicago called “Go Fish” made a splash at Sundance in 1994.

“It’s so great to look back and appreciate how significant ‘Go Fish’ really was,” Olson said. “It was the first widely released lesbian film that told the everyday lives of a young, racially diverse, politically engaged, contemporary lesbian friend group. We could watch it and say, ‘Oh, this is something that represents me. That looks like me. That looks like my life,’ in a way that hadn’t happened before.” 

Screenwriter and actor Guinevere Turner said by the early 1990s, she had watched practically every lesbian film and never saw herself or her friends represented in the limited portrayals available at the time.

“Lesbian films were starting to get a reputation for being kind of depressing and moody and low production quality,” Turner told NBC News. “At that point, I think the two words ‘lesbian film’ just sounded dreary to the world, like it was going to be some somber lonely lady on a fainting couch, which a lot of them were.”

Turner and her eventual collaborator, Rose Troche, met in Chicago in the early ’90s while both were part of ACT UP, a grassroots group working to end the AIDS crisis. The duo eventually decided to create the type of film they wanted to see.

“I had never even read a script, much less written one,” said Turner, who would go on to write the screenplay for and star in “Go Fish,” which would catapult her career and Troche’s.

Shot on 16 mm film in black and white, “Go Fish,” about finding love in Chicago’s lesbian community, was filmed over several years with nonactors pulled from diners and dance clubs to make up the community Turner and Troche, the film’s co-screenwriter and director, were part of and knew existed elsewhere.

Related stories:

• Lesbian cinema emerges from the shadows at NYC’s Sapph-o-Rama film event
• Kristen Stewart and her 'Love Lies Bleeding' co-star on bringing lesbian sex to the cinema
• 'Bottoms' reinvents the teen sex comedy with a fight club and a lesbian twist
• Lesbian bars, broken hearts and dildos: Beanie Feldstein on the wild ride of ‘Drive-Away Dolls’

They secured finishing funds from Frameline and a boost from Killer Films’ Christine Vachon, who connected them with producer John Pierson, who already had hits like Spike Lee’s 1986 film “She’s Gotta Have It” under his belt. Pierson’s signoff ensured that “Go Fish” had the unlikely but heartening distinction of becoming the first film to ink a major distribution deal at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994, signing with The Samuel Goldwyn Co. to the tune of $450,000.

“It was very exciting to have something that was so uncompromising and from inside the community,” Rich said.

“Some of it is just right place, right time,” Turner said of the film’s success. “When independent cinema was really starting to be an exciting thing, it was like the 25th anniversary of Stonewall, and we hit a moment where k.d. lang was on the cover of Vanity Fair getting shaved by Cindy Crawford.”

Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema —  whose third film, the lesbian romance “When Night Is Falling,” was released one year after “Go Fish” hit theaters — said she was impressed with how “Go Fish” was not centered on a coming-out experience, as most previous lesbian films had been.

“I really loved how it was just not, ‘She’s coming out! Will she? Won’t she? Can she? Oh, but where are the boys?’” Rozema said. “It’s just a bunch of women living their lives and being who they are.”

Shortly after its Sundance premiere, “Go Fish” opened in theaters nationwide just in time for Pride Month in June 1994, with Turner and Troche receiving favorable press in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, and traveling around the world in support of the film.

They also found camaraderie and healthy competition with other aspiring lesbian filmmakers at the time, several of whom went on to write, direct and produce their own queer films. These filmmakers include Maria Maggenti (1995’s “The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love”), Cheryl Dunye (1996’s “The Watermelon Woman”), Lisa Cholodenko (1998’s “High Art”), Kimberly Peirce (1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry”), Jamie Babbit (1999’s “But I’m a Cheerleader”) and Angela Robinson, whose Sapphic spy film “D.E.B.S.” was also a sensation at Sundance as a short before being turned into a feature for release in 2004.

Robinson said “Go Fish” was “earth-shattering at the time,” leading to at least a decade of Hollywood taking a chance on lesbian filmmakers looking to make work with explicitly gay themes. Notably, after several lesbian films received R and NC-17 ratings, “D.E.B.S.” was the first lesbian film to be rated PG-13.

“There was a definite kind of energy and soup around that time,” Robinson said, “and it felt really political to even get your movie made. You really felt like part of the movement was also seen if you could kind of crash into Hollywood and get your movie all the way through all the barriers of the time.”

One of those barriers included casting, which was a struggle when even mini-majors and independent studios were looking for Hollywood stars to be attached to any given project. For “Go Fish,” Turner and Troche pulled in friends and women off the street, but for features that required professionals, there were very few lesbian actors out in the ’90s, and if straight actors didn’t pass on the projects themselves, their management or publicists did on their behalf with concerns about career repercussions.

When casting the leads for their 1996 debut “Bound,” Lilly and Lana Wachowski saw several established actors pass despite the fleshed-out characters of lovers Corky and Violet. Those roles eventually went to Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly, who would eventually become stars due, in part, to their undeniable chemistry in the smoldering neo-noir, opening a door for actors (straight and otherwise) to see the potential accolades and attention possible for playing a lesbian part.

“It actually speaks a lot to Jennifer and Gina’s courage to take on these two roles that a lot of women passed on,” Lilly Wachowski said. “But Gina and Jennifer certainly saw that the script had a lot going for it and the way that we would talk about it because we were extremely interested in the culture.”

Like “Go Fish,” “Bound” also employed real queer women to be a part of the project (particularly the film’s bar scene), and queer sexpert Susie Bright both made a cameo in “Bound” and advised on the film’s Sapphic sex scenes, years before intimacy coordinators became a consideration. Two years after “Go Fish” premiered to a packed house at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre for Frameline, “Bound” played at the same theater to a similarly full house of lesbians and other queers who were shocked to see the leading ladies win in the end.

“We wanted them to have this heroic moment,” Wachowski said of Violet and Corky, the leads in “Bound,” adding that she was “happy and proud to have been able to give” queer audiences “this thing that they had never seen before.”

Olson recalled Troche sharing a similar sentiment at the 1994 premiere of “Go Fish” at the Castro Theatre: “I remember Rose saying to the 1,400 ecstatic lesbians, ‘I made this for you.’”

“Go Fish” and its contemporaries inspired a new era of lesbian filmmakers who brought an expansive view of what it means to be queer and a woman in different bodies and corners of the world, including Nisha Gantra’s “Chutney Popcorn” (1999), Alice Wu’s “Saving Face” (2004), Dee Rees’ “Pariah” (2011) and Desiree Akhavan’s “Appropriate Behavior” (2014). Around this time, Sapphic entertainment started to switch gears, with Troche, Turner, Robinson and several others turning to television when Showtime debuted “The L Word” in 2004. Running for six seasons, the Los Angeles-set lesbian series was another huge moment for lesbian visibility on screen, sharing several throughlines with “Go Fish,” including Turner’s recurring appearance on the show.

Despite the continued production of lesbian films during this period, they remained largely relegated to limited release. By the time “The L Word” went off the air in 2009, independent cinema had changed. Now, even though it’s easier than ever to make a movie, it’s never been more difficult to get it seen in a culture inundated with content. Without the Hollywood muscle of a producer like Elizabeth Banks (“Bottoms”) or a star like Kristen Stewart (“Love Lies Bleeding”) willing to bare all on the cover of Rolling Stone, LGBTQ film festivals are more necessary than ever for aspiring filmmakers whose work is not solely based on career aspirations, but on reflecting and reaching their community.

“It didn’t explode — it didn’t become bigger,” Rich said of lesbian cinema. “There is the sense in which the lesbian representation is always the bridesmaid, never the bride. We never really arrive, we’re always arriving.”

Three decades after “Go Fish” helped usher in an era of new lesbian cinema, the film is finding new audiences (and vice versa) with a new 4K print restoration that showed at Sundance this past January and at NewFest, New York City’s LGBTQ film festival, in April, with further screenings this summer. A retrospective of Rozema’s work played in both New York and Los Angeles this month, “D.E.B.S.” has just been announced as part of Cinespia’s Pride screening series in L.A. in June, and “Bound” has just been entered into The Criterion Collection.

Still, in three decades, there’s a lot left to be desired, with even proven creators like Turner, Wachowski and Robinson, all of whom have queer film and television projects in the ether that have yet to be greenlit, indicating that Hollywood might be stuck in yet another cyclical ebb for lesbian or otherwise queer content.

“There’s a similar elation to that idea of me sitting in that audience in the Castro and being humbled that I was able to do this for all these people,” Wachowski said. “I’m just not satisfied enough, so I’m simultaneously fighting as hard as I can to get these kinds of films made while railing against an industry that I think is responding to a lot of the queer backlash that is going on in the world. So I’m happy, but I’m still pissed off.”

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Trish Bendix is a writer based in Los Angeles. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Bustle and Conde Nast's them.