M. Night Shyamalan (Signs, The Sixth Sense) is no longer the master of terror. He seems to get progressively worse with each film. There are exceptions for some people, I think. For example, I liked The Village more than I did Unbreakable, and while other people panned The Happening, I thought it was okay. However, there is no denying that the man is a fraction of his former self. While he no longer deems it necessary to have a twist in every movie, his last few movies, especially Lady in the Water, The Last Airbender, and After Earth, have been dreadful. With The Visit, a film he both wrote and directed, he tries something new. It fails. Miserably. At least for me, it did. There is an audience for it, evidenced by its $25 million in its opening weekend alone and a 59% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But those who remember the masterful Shyamalan from 1999-2002 are not the same people who will enjoy this. The Visit seems to be a mixture between The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, Funny Games, The Strangers, and Goosebumps. I’ll admit that this was the second movie of a Bryan Buser double and that it was the only movie that matched up when my first movie ended. I saw the film by default, and I was prepared to walk out at any point. I anticipated it. However, there was something about it early on that kept me interested. And then, when I looked at my watch, and I was already 30 minutes into a 90-minute movie, I knew I would stick it out.
As mentioned, this is not your typical Shyamalan film. I think even he realized what he was doing was no longer working. I felt like he was almost mocking the genre that defined him with this movie. This movie wasn’t at all scary. Even during the scenes that attempted to be spooky, he inserted an unneeded amount of goofiness. He tried to make this movie funny, scary, and heartfelt all at once. He succeeded at none of these things. It was entertaining, at least to some extent. It did keep my curiosity up, at least to some extent. I didn’t hate the movie until there were about 15-30 minutes left. But when I began adding everything together and admitting to utterly ridiculous it was, I knew I had to develop a plan to get out of that theater as quickly as possible when the credits rolled in fear that I would see someone who might recognize. I understand that there are audiences out there that like this sort of thing. If you liked the movie The Cabin the Woods, you might like this one. As I mentioned, I prefer to keep my horrors separated from my comedies. Those two genres just don’t go together for me.
So maybe there is a twist to this movie, and maybe there isn’t. And maybe if there is, the twist is lame. In any case, a mother (Kathryn Hahn – Step Brothers, Revolutionary Road) has a new man in her life, and the two embark on a five-day cruise. The problem is what does she do with her 15-year-old daughter Becca (Olivia DeJonge – The Sisterhood of Night) and her 13-year-old son Tyler (Ed Oxenbould – Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Paper Planes). Ultimately she decides to send them by train to her estranged parents, who she hasn’t spoken to in years and who Becca and Tyler have never met. This already might raise some concerns. Would a mother just send her kids to spend five days with people they’ve never met? Highly unlikely. But let’s go ahead and accept that.
So Nana (Deanna Dunagan – Running Scared, Men Don’t Leave) plays Nana while Peter McRobbie (Inherent Vice, Lincoln) is Pop Pop. Both are excited to see their grandchildren but aren’t necessarily used to having younger people around. The older couple runs a tight ship and doesn’t seem to show much tendency to change from their routine. They go to sleep at 9:30 each night. This isn’t exactly when teenagers go to sleep on summer vacation. Nana and Pop-Pop are lovely enough, but they possess some unnatural habits. Some of what they do is frightening at first, while others are comical. By the time the movie concludes, it’s all pretty comical. As I said, I felt like Shyamalan was poking fun at a genre that he pretty much owned for four or five years. I applaud him, in a sense, for realizing that what he was doing was failing both with his audiences and the critics. But, in my opinion, The Visit was amateur hour at its very worst. The performances were not very good. The whole movie was pretty much shot with a handheld camera (Becca is doing a documentary on meeting her grandparents for the first time, so the film is shot from her point of view). Tyler is a young, wannabe rapper brought in for comic relief. At times, he is kind of funny, but why was this movie a comedy? If you like Shaun of the Dead, you might like The Visit. I did not. It’s just not my cup of tea. I liked Dawn of the Dead. Now that was a great movie.
The Visit was weird. Do your research going in. Besides this one, I would read other reviews because maybe this type of movie is your thing. My thing is Signs, The Sixth Sense, The Village (and even The Happening to an extent…shhh….). That is M. Night Shyamalan to me. Not Lady in the Water. Not The Last Airbender. Not After Earth. And not The Visit. Prepare yourself if you see this one. Go in with the right mindset. I was entertained throughout most of this. It wasn’t until the end that I started to reflect, felt duped, and wanted the 90 minutes of my life back.
Plot 5/10
Character Development 2/10
Character Chemistry 3/10
Acting 3/10
Screenplay 4/10
Directing 4/10
Cinematography 4/10 (amateur hour; you can only deal with handheld camera movies for so long)
Sound 4/10 (^^^)
Hook and Reel 7/10 (I kept waiting for it to get better, but it never did)
Universal Relevance 4/10
40%
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- Get Out
- The Others
- Split
- Insidious
- The Village