The Horror Show
The Visit
by M. Night Shyamalan
Over the last several years M. Night Shyamalan’s track record has been downright painful. He went from breaking onto the scene with the memorable The 6th Sense to crashing and burning with flops like The Happening, Devil, and After Earth. Even the better, yet not stellar, films in his portfolio like Signs, The Lady in The Water, or The Village were not well-received by critics and movie-goers alike. This year’s book-to-television adaptation, Wayward Pines started off strong and then fell flat on its face, shaming fans of the Blake Crouch trilogy. So when I heard about The Visit I was both excited and appalled at the same time. Was I going to be wasting my time with this new Shyamalan film and cringing the whole time, or was I going to love it? There was only one way to find out.
I saw this on opening night and I am super glad that I did.
From the moment I was introduced to each individual character in this documentary-style film, I fell in love with them. Kathryn Hahn, is genuine and adorable in her role as single mom working at Wal-Mart. While I often don’t enjoy child actors or children in general in horror films, the two main characters in this film, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler aka T-Diamond Stylus (Ed Oxenbould), come across as believable siblings in their teens with a powerful dynamic that is steady through the film’s entirety. The grandparents, Pop-Pop (Peter McRobbie) and Nana (Deanna Dunagan) are fantastic and really nail the awkward “grandparents get grandchildren for the week” thing.
At the start of the film, we meet Mom and she explains that she hasn’t seen her parents in over fifteen years since running away with the father of her children (to her parents’ dismay). Her parents have recently contacted her and want to meet their grandchildren, so she agrees to allow the children to spend the week with them at their house in the country while she goes on a cruise with her boyfriend. Becca wants to be a filmmaker so she has decided to turn the whole experience into a documentary as a gift for her mother. Tyler is a wannabe rapper and while annoying at times (as all thirteen year olds are) he is hilarious with his constant freestyling and comical contributions to Becca’s film.
The kids meet Nana and Pop-Pop and everyone is instantly smitten. The old folks are welcoming and seem genuinely interested in their grandchildren’s interests in film and rap music. Nana is a seriously awesome baker and Pop-Pop seems like your typical outdoorsman. The couple also does volunteer work at a nearby hospital, donating their time as counselors. This seems like the perfect reunion of the perfect little family until the grandparents begin acting strangely and the children become weary of spending the entire week with them.
Nana’s bizarre actions at night are coupled with Pop-Pop’s secrets in the shed out back. When the children express their concern with these things, they’re told it’s because Nana and Pop-Pop are old, and old people are weird and forgetful and sometimes don’t know what they’re doing. The viewer is able to believe this, Alzheimer’s and Dementia are real things that plague elderly people. But as the story progresses, the children find that they’re in a bit more danger than being in the care of odd or forgetful old folks.
There’s no way I could continue to explain to you the events in the film without spoiling anything. Every small thing from what’s in the shed to what exactly Nana does that makes her so creepy or absurd would be spoiling the film in some way. The Visit, in my opinion, is M. Night Shyamalan’s redemption film. With 50% comedy and 50% horror, he hit the nail on the head and delivered viewers a fantastic product with a sweet, little red bow on top.
The twist at the end, while some say was predictable but still entertaining, was just what the audience needed. As a writer, I have a habit of plotting out all the different ways a film or television show can go while I’m watching, and 98% of the time I am spot-on with predicting any twists. I probably could have done that with The Visit but I was so engrossed in the characters and the story, that I didn’t find my mind wandering anywhere and I didn’t have the time to worry about where the film was going since I was enjoying myself so much.
There was one direction I kept leaning towards, however, and I am seriously glad Shyamalan didn’t take it there. Hint: it has something to do with a creepy story Nana tells Becca. If he had taken the film down this path, I would have been disappointed, and another film would have been added to the Shyamalan crap-pile. But he did well, and The Visit is a definite crowd pleaser for both fans of horror and comedy junkies alike. You’d be doing yourself a big favor by watching it.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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