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Kim Hollis: M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit debuted with $25.4 million. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: The importance of this weekend is that for the moment, people can lay off M. Night Shyamalan. The guy has been verbally assaulted so much for the last decade, and I never really understood it. It was as if some never really bought into the early success, so they were irritated one guy could bring them The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable. He’d been SO good early on and they were happy he was averaging out. Well, if you take a look at the “low points,” his record is still pretty good. People seemed to start to get Shyamalan fatigue sometime around The Village, but that still made money. Lady in Water was definitely a disappointment. The Happening at least paid for itself and probably earned a little. Even I won’t defend The Last Airbender, but its international numbers were surprisingly strong. After Earth is a perfect example of the criticism I am talking about. The film actually was much better than all of the public criticisms. So from my perspective, I am perfectly satisfied to see him get a nice win.

Perhaps the stars aligned, but The Visit was brought to us by Universal, and every film they bring to theaters is made of gold right now. It only cost $5 million to make and, like The Perfect Guy, is taking in real money already - in a big way. This one probably had a path to success even faster than the number one opener. The Rotten Tomatoes score is a little higher than the average horror flick, so this one might hang around for a little bit, getting better than average holds for a horror film. Cheers to M. Night Shyamalan, though.

Matthew Huntley: On the one hand, this opening makes me happy for M. Night Shyamalan, who (and I agree with Jason on this) has taken an unfair beating the past few years. The Visit at least shows he can still be a successful commercial director and hopefully we'll see more from him in the future sooner rather than later, because when he's on, he's on.

On the other hand, I don't believe The Visit is a very good film. It's silly, mostly, and although it will pay off handsomely for the studio because it cost so little to make, the quality just isn't there. So while it's good for the industry, and gives it some extra breadth, I don't think the movie showcases Shyamalan's real talent. It's a financial win, to be sure; but not a critical one.

Ryan Kyle: And the Universal hot streak continues with another film grossing a good chunk above even the most optimistic projections. This is a major win for everyone involved. Universal is already making profit and Shyamalan can finally rest soundly knowing that he has a film certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes again. With $1 million of the Friday gross coming from Thursday night showings, the +15% bump on Saturday indicates some good word-of-mouth, so The Visit might have a little bit more life to it beyond the opening weekend of most horror films. While I expected The Perfect Guy to open as high as it did, this opening truly surprised me. I think Shyamalan is still in the dog house, but this opening and audience response definitely loosens his leash once again.

Edwin Davies: This is an undeniable win for Shyamalan, which is something no one has been able to say for at least a decade. After the complete implosion of The Lady in the Water, which was not only a pretty costly failure but one that came with a bunch of behind-the-scenes stories that established his reputation as being kind of an asshole (though arguably no bigger than most directors, but they don't get tell-all books written about them) and destroyed his previously successful working relationship with Disney, he seemed to stumble from project to project, with each of them either losing money, getting bad reviews, or both.

Personally, I thought that he was still a good filmmaker, but that he was not a particularly good judge of the projects he was working on, and so he ended up making films that he wasn't well suited to (like The Last Airbender or After Earth), or applying his earnestness to something ridiculous like The Happening. With The Visit, he seems to be cutting loose a little bit, and seems personally (not to mention financially, since he footed the budget) invested in it in a way that has been lacking from a lot of his recent work. This feels like a tentative step in the right direction for him, so hopefully this success will reinvigorate him for his next project.

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