What’s up with Gran? Hansel and Gretel gets the M Night Shyamalan treatment

M Night Shyamalan bounds into the room looking a good decade younger than his 45 years and far more refreshed than anyone on a promotional tour ought to.

The writer-director has been in Dublin for half a day, and already he has managed to take in the Irish premiere of his new film, The Visit, his first pint of Guinness and a certain showdown between Dublin and Mayo. "It was awesome," he says. "The plane landed. I unpacked. And then I'm in a pub watching the game with chicken tenders. It literally took me five minutes to get into it. It's like a mixture of all sports: a bit of soccer, some football, little bit of volleyball. The mother of all sports."

We're just glad he found the time. It has been a ridiculously busy time for the Pondicherry-born, Pennsylvania-raised artist. In 2013, Shyamalan – or Night as he prefers to be called – released I Got Schooled, a study of the achievement gap in US education. Wayward Pines, the TV series he executive-produced and occasionally directed, proved a monster hit last summer, when it set new records for seasonal audience figures. And now there's The Visit, a fiendishly clever reworking of the Hansel and Gretel story, in which two mouthy siblings realise that something's not quite right with grandma.

"I've always loved Grimm fairy tales," he says. "And I've always thought it was strange that they present kids with the things they are most afraid of. In Hansel and Gretel that's the child's fear that those who are taking care of him or her are not doing their job properly. They'll abandon them and eat them. Whereas the best-known movie versions of fairy stories – the Disney films – present kids with the things they wish for. That's the opposite narrative impulse."

Pre-teen squabbling

The Visit is characterised by naturalistic teen versus pre-teen squabbling. Parents of similarly aged people will delight in a scene in which the brother and sister attempt to emulate kids playing with a ball. It seems and sounds like improvised dialogue. Except it isn't. "Every single line was in the script. My kids are that age. I listen to them and their friends, and all the little lines they have. I just didn't include their use of the word 'like'. Or that upspeak thing they do. That would have been too debilitating to listen to."

That beautifully observed writing wouldn't have worked nearly so well without two brilliant central performances from Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould. Casting is a process that ought to receive far more attention, Night says.

“I didn’t have anybody’s permission. I just started shooting. And because there were so few cast members and because it was all audition-based, I could really concentrate on those five actors. What happens in casting is fascinating. You can have two people who seem like there’s nothing to separate them. But there is.

"With Signs, for example, it came down to two little girls, both five years old, and they seemed identical. And then I noticed this little movement Abigail made and I just knew: that's the girl. So she goes on to become Abigail Breslin and the other girl isn't acting any more. In retrospect it wasn't close. I just didn't know enough. You have to really look at auditions."

The Visit is Night's 11th feature film and it has been widely hailed as a return to form. Few directors have been forced to weather the kind of critical brickbats that he has. His past four films – The Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender and After Earth – were each nominated for worst picture and worst director at the unfunny Golden Raspberry Awards. He gets criticised for being the twist guy. He gets criticised for not being the twist guy.

"A lot of it is expectation," he says, smiling. "I think if I had made Amour – a film I love – people would have focused on the twist. Oh, he's done it again. I've seen others go through the same thing. I do wonder why we each go through our experience with the media separately. We should share more. We should have the maturity and the confidence to talk about this stuff. It's like saying to an athlete, 'The last couple games you've missed several three-pointers: are you worried the same thing will happen tonight?' But for a great athlete, misses are valuable. Like I always tell my kids, you're not failing enough. And you can't learn without failure."

The Visit, which was made for less than $5 million with no stars attached, was filmed in secret. "It's not that I'm trying to work outside the system. I'm trying to find a way to work with it. My next film will be another small thriller. And I'm enjoying the minimalism of TV. With movies, you don't get to talk to an audience sometimes for a year and a half. So it's nice to keep the connection."

• The Visit is on general release

SCIENCE OF THE JUMP SCARE: M NIGHT’S PHILOSOPHY

“Suspense and fear have their own rhythm. You either get it or you don’t. I hate unearned jump scares. When I see an unearned jump scare, I’m done. As soon as it happens, I hate the person onscreen, I hate the other people in the movie, I hate the film-maker and I hate the movie. You are shitting on your character.

"To do a proper jump scare, it has to fit with the rhythm of the character. It has to be organic. In The Visit, the first time Becca leaves the room at night, she's going to get cookies. And it seems like an innocent thing until she hears something over her shoulder. And in that moment, we are her character. We see the same thing moving behind us. And then . . ."