As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- This story is the opposite of a Changeling Tale; instead of your kids being taken away and replaced, it's your parents or grandparents being imposters.
- The fact that the grandparents are perfectly sweet and normal at the start of the visit and slowly become more and more unstable as time passes initially seems like standard horror movie pacing, but a blink-and-you-miss-it moment when Becca is locked in the grandparents' bedroom with her "grandmother" gives a potential explanation: a large number of pills are on the dresser, implying that the "grandparents" were taking medication at the start of the visit but either ran out or stopped taking it as time went on.
- In this thread
, someone noted that when the kids are making up stories about the town, they mention a policeman named Jerry who's never at work. After The Reveal, Loretta tries calling the local police, who don't pick up. - 9:30 PM is bedtime at mental institutions.
- The ticket collector and doctor both mention they used to be actors. Becca tells Stacey to just act natural. It's foreshadowing the fact that "Nana" and "Pop Pop" are playing roles.
- "Pop Pop" has two seemingly dementia-related episodes that involve him believing he's getting ready to go to a costume party. In reality, he is wearing a costume, of sorts, with pretending to be Loretta's father.
- A lot of Shyamalan's stories have supernatural themes in them. This one is made scarier because there isn't a supernatural cause, it's entirely human madness.
- If there's nothing supernatural at work, why does Nana Jump Scare the camera that Becca left recording, other than... well, setting up a jump scare?
- It's amazing that the kids are able to communicate with their mother via a real-time, high-resolution Skype call; Nana and Pop Pop must have well maintained broadband service despite being an elderly (and criminally insane) couple that live out in the middle of nowhere.
- Maybe they used their mobile hotspots?
- As noted by CinemaSins, why did Loretta not provide the kids with a photo of her parents, or at least some physical description? Note that she did describe an antique clock at the home; why not give the kids an idea of what their grandparents look like?
- Possibly explained by the fact that Loretta left very suddenly after an altercation and hadn't seen them since, so would be unlikely to have photos, and the basic physical description would be "probably old-looking white people."
- In that case, why would she send them to her grandparents at all? You'd think someone whose been no-contact with their parents for that long would just hire a babysitter.
- It's possible that she did describe them and the impostors so happened to fit enough of that description as to where Becca and Tyler didn't suspect anything until the weirdness came, so she wouldn't have known that they weren't her parents until the kids send her the video of "Nana" with the knife.
- This could be Fridge Brilliance because, if Loretta had photos, they wouldn't be the most recent and, if we remember that one scene where we see the Jamisons in a recent picture, Claire and Mitchel (The imposters) do favor them to a point and them looking enough like the Jamisons is probably why we don't hear anything about escapee psych-ward patients or, for that matter, why the Jamisons' neighbors in Masonville didn't second guess anything either. Though, that does leave some questions unanswered with how well they could assume the Jamisons' identities besides looks.
- Possibly explained by the fact that Loretta left very suddenly after an altercation and hadn't seen them since, so would be unlikely to have photos, and the basic physical description would be "probably old-looking white people."
