 M. Night Shyamalan doesn't need a whole lot of introduction. With films like The Sixth Sense and Signs, he became one of the premier thriller directors working. The movies after that, they didn't do so well. And the last two, they didn't do well at all. Now he's back with a new secret project called The Visit. We sat down with him at Comic Con 2015 to talk about the movie and what's coming next. So you're here primarily to talk about your new movie, The Visit, which is a very interesting movie. You went away in secret, told nobody, made this movie self-financed, around $5 million, which is fascinating because your last couple of movies were much, much bigger. What made you feel like it was time to kind of just go off the grid and do your own thing? You know, I guess it was a feeling like I just wanted to concentrate on storytelling. I just wanted to concentrate on the things that make me happy as a filmmaker in the sense of like, you know, writing a great script, not thinking about writing a script and saying, how am I going to convince someone else to make it? Which is already kind of a weird mindset to be in. You know, you're already not being in the thing. This is for me. This is, I want to put as much of myself into it. And then, you know, really saying it's never been about the amount of money that makes a great movie. Never. You know, and I want to concentrate on storytelling, how to direct properly, how to storyboard. And if I do all of those things right, somebody will want to buy this movie. And one day maybe I'll be at Comic-Con and show the movie. Well, you pulled that off. So congrats. Thank you. I'm interested. Like, do you find that smaller scale? Like, and it's a bit of a, you're normally, like, as a director, you're very, very formal in your compositions. It seems like you're a little more loose. Like, were there things about going small, having more fun in this project that intrigued you in particular? Well, I'm definitely shot oriented, very carefully, meticulously craft the shots. And that's true for The Visit. They're all very, now it had to look like it wasn't meticulously crafted, which was fun. It was a fun challenge. I love this approach to filmmaking. And it was more pliable. It was more loose because if I went, you know what? We're not going to do this sofa scene right now. You know, I have this idea. I want to go do that thing again that we did yesterday. I just don't think we got it. You know, there's no process to check with. There's no one, those accountants. We just moved the cameras and we did it. And in fact, I'll give you an example of how pliable it was. I took the budget, which was 30 days, and I said, we're going to shoot it in 27 days. And then I said to everyone, the crew and the cast, everybody, I said, we're coming back in three weeks. No one take a fricking job. We're coming back in three weeks and we're going to do the last three days. So it was almost like I was cheating. I felt like, you know, I took a test, saw what I got wrong and was like, I'm just going to fix this real quick. And that's because it was so pliable and thin and lean and, you know, small crew and small cast. It turned out to just be fun. You know, you were really listening to the characters, really listening to what you were making. So it was a very rewarding process. And hopefully, you know, audiences will sense how much fun I had making the movie and will have an equal amount of fun watching it. Yeah, it's interesting. Like you've seen reinvigorated between this and Wayward Pines, you know, after, you know, working on a lot of big movies, which can be exhausting just from like a physical perspective. One thing I'm curious about, both this is a thriller as Wayward Pines is, which has kind of like become your hallmark. I remember reading a lot of your early scripts in the, you know, in the 90s before The Sixth Sense, you know, stuff that's, you know, like, like with love. Yes, exactly. In your first two features. Small character pieces that were fantastic and moving. You know, that thread has continued in your work. Yes. But I'm just curious, it was, have you ever felt like you had to always add the layer, the thriller layer on top of that, you know, after The Sixth Sense, do you think? I don't think of it like that. I do definitely know myself now, unconsciously, I'm like, I have two sides of me. One's kind of a dark, twisted side, and then the other one's kind of like an emotional family side. And those have always existed. And they've existed from go. As you mentioned, you know, I wrote and made more dramas and more family oriented fare before Sixth Sense. And even the year of Sixth Sense I wrote Stuart Little. So for me, it's always been open. I've always been out of the closet about this. I've had these two sides, but yet they go, oh no, this is, this is you, you know. And I get, what I also get is, I'm, my baseline is more emotional than the general population. I get that. You know, like, you know, I'm very, you know, I'm very moved, I'm ready emotionally to be involved in anything, stories and things like that. And what I did, I think in Sixth Sense was the first time I kind of took those instincts and kind of gave them balance with other things. So that there was, there was, the emotionality was coming this way, not right at you. And when it comes at you, everybody does that and goes, you know, ah, I'm not, I'm not gonna go there, but if it sneaks up on you, it's powerful. And really we want to be, have a cathartic experience. So that was the balance that I've learned. So I don't feel like I'm not making dramas anymore, you know. So the visit, for all of its scares and all of its outrageousness and all of its humor, there's a core drama that's going on at the center of it. You know, for me, the visit's about forgiveness. Who knows if the audience will even know that? But you know, they'll be screaming their heads off, but at the center of it is a drama. It's interesting you talk about that emotional accessibility that a lot of people aren't. I think we see that across a lot of movies right now, where there's, you know, where audiences maybe aren't as ready to go and be open emotionally to things, some of them have gotten more cynical and darker. And it's rare when something actually even tries to push through that. So I'm glad you're still like trying to go and do that. Oh yeah. It's important, you know. Oh yeah, by the way, it's actually respect what we're talking about. That what you just said that the audience is saying to you, to me, if you make something too emotional, too soft, right off the bat, you know, if the baseline is that, I'm not with you, because that's not my life experience. So I don't find that valid, the way you're taking it. Now if I acknowledge their well-deserved cynicism of the world, and I can acknowledge that, and I can come in with that voice and say, I'm with you. We're gonna, I'm gonna speak to you from this angle, and then we together might turn and find something emotional. They'll go there. They'll go there. And I believe they even want to. But again, it's this, you have to acknowledge that we're starting, all of us are starting like this. Yeah, so it's interesting, so like that does factor into your writing process. It does, it does, because to some extent it's, the simplest version of it is, you have not earned the right to go to that emotional place yet. You just haven't earned it yet. And by earning, I mean, you have to acknowledge where people are coming in. That's out of, that's respect, you know. And then if you can do that, you might sometime in the two hours earn your way there. Right. Well it's like, it's interesting, it's the way to surprise them. It's very similar to how Unbreakable worked for me, where people did not know they liked comic book movies at the time. They liked that, they're like, oh maybe we do, and now everybody likes comic book movies, right? But you had to sneak it in there. It was like, we're not really doing this thing, don't look over there, but oh wait, there's a comic book movie out today. Yes. Told from like a very serious dramatic perspective. Yeah, you know, the predominant way to tell comic book movies now is kind of tongue in cheek, you know, farcical, you know, kind of keeping it buoyant and entertainment, saying we're not taking ourselves seriously, we're not taking ourselves seriously, we're not taking ourselves seriously. And that's really entertaining to watch and all that stuff. That wasn't what Unbreakable was for me. That was, you know, always it's taking some premise that's on the verge of unbelievable, which is unbelievable, but I'm going to try to ground it, you know, and make it so that you walk out thinking, is this possible? Is this, you know, is what we just saw on the visit, is that possible? Is, you know, is Unbreakable possible? You know, that kind of thing. And so the limitations do help with that. Right. So, talk, I mentioned Labor of Love earlier, there was an announcement that you were going to be working on that, possibly with Bruce Willis. Yes, yes. Is that still happening? I'm definitely not doing it next. I'm writing a new thriller. The problem is, you know, the problem with trying, Labor of Love is one of two screenplays that I've written since puberty that I didn't make. And I want to make Labor of Love badly, but it, to some extent, the reason that that worked is because it represented a time in my life. You know, I wrote it when I was 22, 23, and I'm burning to write this thing right now that I'm, that's telling you exactly, the thing I'm writing right now will tell you guys what I'm feeling right now, and the philosophies and the things that I'm thinking about right now. And it feels weird to kind of go, let me just go back in the time portal and pretend I'm 23 again, and ignore what's happened over the last 20 years. Right. So how do you go about when you say, okay, we want to revisit that, like what is that process like? Revisit. Like if you want to go redo that project, do you kind of sit back and get set to rewrite from square one, or do you go from square one? No, that's the struggle. You know, I've almost made that movie three times now, three separate times. It's also, I'm under the quandary that that was prior to the things that we talked about, right? So the audience is, you know, do I not put my name on it? Do I, you know, use a different form of my name? These are all the things that, if I'm going to make a thing that's basically a flat out romance, there's nothing scary about it at all. There's nothing thriller about it at all. You know, how do we, what to do? That's an interesting challenge at that point. Well, yeah it is. How do you break that down, because you know your name has weight. Basically, films that have come out and there's an expectation. How do you juggle that between what you want to do? Well, luckily, yeah, luckily if it is a box, it's one that I created. You know, it wasn't a book that I found and I'm like, oh no, now what am I going to do? It's all things that were parts of me that I deeply believe in. My goal is to keep widening and making the box, not necessarily widening, although that's the case, but making it more customized, the box. I'm happy to live in this box. I created it, but it should really match who I am. So like Unbreakable, hey, I didn't like it. It wasn't scary. It wasn't supposed to be scary, but it's a mystery and a thriller and I love comic books, you know? So now the box becomes like, you know? You keep adding in the village and Lady in the Water, these are all wonderful. The box goes, chh-chh-chh. Right. Do you think audiences have a hard time tracking when their favorite artists and any other musicians, filmmakers, whatever, grow and evolve? Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I get that. You know, when we think about, I mean, you know, when you think about like, one of my favorite authors, my hero is Agatha Christie. You know, she made 80 mysteries, right? And then she used the pseudonym for non-mysteries. I mean, she was very black and white about it. And that just might be the case, you know? That might be the case. And that's the, fine, if you're an author, it actually is not so bad, you know what I mean? I wonder, I'm thinking about like Stephen King or something like that, you know, an author that we have really strong expectations from. And he's done a good job of keeping the box, you know, more customized for him. You know, like the one about JFK, the book about JFK, which I love. It's weird. It's not necessarily scary. It's, you know, it's weird and interesting as with Stand By Me and things like that. So that's important for me to know that that's there as opposed to just the horror elements for him.
 M. Night Shyamalan doesn't need a whole lot of introduction.
 With films like The Sixth Sense and Signs, he became one of the premier thriller directors
 working.
 The movies after that, they didn't do so well.
 And the last two, they didn't do well at all.
 Now he's back with a new secret project called The Visit.
 We sat down with him at Comic Con 2015 to talk about the movie and what's coming next.
 So you're here primarily to talk about your new movie, The Visit, which is a very interesting
 movie.
 You went away in secret, told nobody, made this movie self-financed, around $5 million,
 which is fascinating because your last couple of movies were much, much bigger.
 What made you feel like it was time to kind of just go off the grid and do your own thing?
 You know, I guess it was a feeling like I just wanted to concentrate on storytelling.
 I just wanted to concentrate on the things that make me happy as a filmmaker in the sense
 of like, you know, writing a great script, not thinking about writing a script and saying,
 how am I going to convince someone else to make it?
 Which is already kind of a weird mindset to be in.
 You know, you're already not being in the thing.
 This is for me.
 This is, I want to put as much of myself into it.
 And then, you know, really saying it's never been about the amount of money that makes
 a great movie.
 Never.
 You know, and I want to concentrate on storytelling, how to direct properly, how to storyboard.
 And if I do all of those things right, somebody will want to buy this movie.
 And one day maybe I'll be at Comic-Con and show the movie.
 Well, you pulled that off.
 So congrats.
 Thank you.
 I'm interested.
 Like, do you find that smaller scale?
 Like, and it's a bit of a, you're normally, like, as a director, you're very, very formal
 in your compositions.
 It seems like you're a little more loose.
 Like, were there things about going small, having more fun in this project that intrigued
 you in particular?
 Well, I'm definitely shot oriented, very carefully, meticulously craft the shots.
 And that's true for The Visit.
 They're all very, now it had to look like it wasn't meticulously crafted, which was
 fun.
 It was a fun challenge.
 I love this approach to filmmaking.
 And it was more pliable.
 It was more loose because if I went, you know what?
 We're not going to do this sofa scene right now.
 You know, I have this idea.
 I want to go do that thing again that we did yesterday.
 I just don't think we got it.
 You know, there's no process to check with.
 There's no one, those accountants.
 We just moved the cameras and we did it.
 And in fact, I'll give you an example of how pliable it was.
 I took the budget, which was 30 days, and I said, we're going to shoot it in 27 days.
 And then I said to everyone, the crew and the cast, everybody, I said, we're coming
 back in three weeks.
 No one take a fricking job.
 We're coming back in three weeks and we're going to do the last three days.
 So it was almost like I was cheating.
 I felt like, you know, I took a test, saw what I got wrong and was like, I'm just going
 to fix this real quick.
 And that's because it was so pliable and thin and lean and, you know, small crew and small
 cast.
 It turned out to just be fun.
 You know, you were really listening to the characters, really listening to what you were
 making.
 So it was a very rewarding process.
 And hopefully, you know, audiences will sense how much fun I had making the movie and will
 have an equal amount of fun watching it.
 Yeah, it's interesting.
 Like you've seen reinvigorated between this and Wayward Pines, you know, after, you know,
 working on a lot of big movies, which can be exhausting just from like a physical perspective.
 One thing I'm curious about, both this is a thriller as Wayward Pines is, which has
 kind of like become your hallmark.
 I remember reading a lot of your early scripts in the, you know, in the 90s before The Sixth
 Sense, you know, stuff that's, you know, like, like with love.
 Yes, exactly.
 In your first two features.
 Small character pieces that were fantastic and moving.
 You know, that thread has continued in your work.
 Yes.
 But I'm just curious, it was, have you ever felt like you had to always add the layer,
 the thriller layer on top of that, you know, after The Sixth Sense, do you think?
 I don't think of it like that.
 I do definitely know myself now, unconsciously, I'm like, I have two sides of me.
 One's kind of a dark, twisted side, and then the other one's kind of like an emotional
 family side.
 And those have always existed.
 And they've existed from go.
 As you mentioned, you know, I wrote and made more dramas and more family oriented fare
 before Sixth Sense.
 And even the year of Sixth Sense I wrote Stuart Little.
 So for me, it's always been open.
 I've always been out of the closet about this.
 I've had these two sides, but yet they go, oh no, this is, this is you, you know.
 And I get, what I also get is, I'm, my baseline is more emotional than the general population.
 I get that.
 You know, like, you know, I'm very, you know, I'm very moved, I'm ready emotionally to be
 involved in anything, stories and things like that.
 And what I did, I think in Sixth Sense was the first time I kind of took those instincts
 and kind of gave them balance with other things.
 So that there was, there was, the emotionality was coming this way, not right at you.
 And when it comes at you, everybody does that and goes, you know, ah, I'm not, I'm not gonna
 go there, but if it sneaks up on you, it's powerful.
 And really we want to be, have a cathartic experience.
 So that was the balance that I've learned.
 So I don't feel like I'm not making dramas anymore, you know.
 So the visit, for all of its scares and all of its outrageousness and all of its humor,
 there's a core drama that's going on at the center of it.
 You know, for me, the visit's about forgiveness.
 Who knows if the audience will even know that?
 But you know, they'll be screaming their heads off, but at the center of it is a drama.
 It's interesting you talk about that emotional accessibility that a lot of people aren't.
 I think we see that across a lot of movies right now, where there's, you know, where
 audiences maybe aren't as ready to go and be open emotionally to things, some of them
 have gotten more cynical and darker.
 And it's rare when something actually even tries to push through that.
 So I'm glad you're still like trying to go and do that.
 Oh yeah.
 It's important, you know.
 Oh yeah, by the way, it's actually respect what we're talking about.
 That what you just said that the audience is saying to you, to me, if you make something
 too emotional, too soft, right off the bat, you know, if the baseline is that, I'm not
 with you, because that's not my life experience.
 So I don't find that valid, the way you're taking it.
 Now if I acknowledge their well-deserved cynicism of the world, and I can acknowledge that,
 and I can come in with that voice and say, I'm with you.
 We're gonna, I'm gonna speak to you from this angle, and then we together might turn and
 find something emotional.
 They'll go there.
 They'll go there.
 And I believe they even want to.
 But again, it's this, you have to acknowledge that we're starting, all of us are starting
 like this.
 Yeah, so it's interesting, so like that does factor into your writing process.
 It does, it does, because to some extent it's, the simplest version of it is, you have not
 earned the right to go to that emotional place yet.
 You just haven't earned it yet.
 And by earning, I mean, you have to acknowledge where people are coming in.
 That's out of, that's respect, you know.
 And then if you can do that, you might sometime in the two hours earn your way there.
 Right.
 Well it's like, it's interesting, it's the way to surprise them.
 It's very similar to how Unbreakable worked for me, where people did not know they liked
 comic book movies at the time.
 They liked that, they're like, oh maybe we do, and now everybody likes comic book movies,
 right?
 But you had to sneak it in there.
 It was like, we're not really doing this thing, don't look over there, but oh wait, there's
 a comic book movie out today.
 Yes.
 Told from like a very serious dramatic perspective.
 Yeah, you know, the predominant way to tell comic book movies now is kind of tongue in
 cheek, you know, farcical, you know, kind of keeping it buoyant and entertainment, saying
 we're not taking ourselves seriously, we're not taking ourselves seriously, we're not
 taking ourselves seriously.
 And that's really entertaining to watch and all that stuff.
 That wasn't what Unbreakable was for me.
 That was, you know, always it's taking some premise that's on the verge of unbelievable,
 which is unbelievable, but I'm going to try to ground it, you know, and make it so that
 you walk out thinking, is this possible?
 Is this, you know, is what we just saw on the visit, is that possible?
 Is, you know, is Unbreakable possible?
 You know, that kind of thing.
 And so the limitations do help with that.
 Right.
 So, talk, I mentioned Labor of Love earlier, there was an announcement that you were going
 to be working on that, possibly with Bruce Willis.
 Yes, yes.
 Is that still happening?
 I'm definitely not doing it next.
 I'm writing a new thriller.
 The problem is, you know, the problem with trying, Labor of Love is one of two screenplays
 that I've written since puberty that I didn't make.
 And I want to make Labor of Love badly, but it, to some extent, the reason that that worked
 is because it represented a time in my life.
 You know, I wrote it when I was 22, 23, and I'm burning to write this thing right now
 that I'm, that's telling you exactly, the thing I'm writing right now will tell you
 guys what I'm feeling right now, and the philosophies and the things that I'm thinking
 about right now.
 And it feels weird to kind of go, let me just go back in the time portal and pretend I'm
 23 again, and ignore what's happened over the last 20 years.
 Right.
 So how do you go about when you say, okay, we want to revisit that, like what is that
 process like?
 Revisit.
 Like if you want to go redo that project, do you kind of sit back and get set to rewrite
 from square one, or do you go from square one?
 No, that's the struggle.
 You know, I've almost made that movie three times now, three separate times.
 It's also, I'm under the quandary that that was prior to the things that we talked about,
 right?
 So the audience is, you know, do I not put my name on it?
 Do I, you know, use a different form of my name?
 These are all the things that, if I'm going to make a thing that's basically a flat out
 romance, there's nothing scary about it at all.
 There's nothing thriller about it at all.
 You know, how do we, what to do?
 That's an interesting challenge at that point.
 Well, yeah it is.
 How do you break that down, because you know your name has weight.
 Basically, films that have come out and there's an expectation.
 How do you juggle that between what you want to do?
 Well, luckily, yeah, luckily if it is a box, it's one that I created.
 You know, it wasn't a book that I found and I'm like, oh no, now what am I going to do?
 It's all things that were parts of me that I deeply believe in.
 My goal is to keep widening and making the box, not necessarily widening, although that's
 the case, but making it more customized, the box.
 I'm happy to live in this box.
 I created it, but it should really match who I am.
 So like Unbreakable, hey, I didn't like it.
 It wasn't scary.
 It wasn't supposed to be scary, but it's a mystery and a thriller and I love comic books,
 you know?
 So now the box becomes like, you know?
 You keep adding in the village and Lady in the Water, these are all wonderful.
 The box goes, chh-chh-chh.
 Right.
 Do you think audiences have a hard time tracking when their favorite artists and any other
 musicians, filmmakers, whatever, grow and evolve?
 Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
 I get that.
 You know, when we think about, I mean, you know, when you think about like, one of my
 favorite authors, my hero is Agatha Christie.
 You know, she made 80 mysteries, right?
 And then she used the pseudonym for non-mysteries.
 I mean, she was very black and white about it.
 And that just might be the case, you know?
 That might be the case.
 And that's the, fine, if you're an author, it actually is not so bad, you know what I
 mean?
 I wonder, I'm thinking about like Stephen King or something like that, you know, an
 author that we have really strong expectations from.
 And he's done a good job of keeping the box, you know, more customized for him.
 You know, like the one about JFK, the book about JFK, which I love.
 It's weird.
 It's not necessarily scary.
 It's, you know, it's weird and interesting as with Stand By Me and things like that.
 So that's important for me to know that that's there as opposed to just the horror elements
 for him.