The Visit * (2015, Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn) – Movie Review

Single mother Kathryn Hahn packs her two young kids Becca and Tyler off to stay with their weird, never-before-seen grandparents, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), and some very odd stuff happens in writer-director M Night Shyamalan‘s infuriating comedy horror movie. ‘Mom, there’s something wrong with nana and papa,’ says Becca, and she’s right, they’re not just old.

Olivia DeJonge and especially Ed Oxenbould are awfully annoying as Becca and Tyler, but it’s not really their fault, since they are both giving Shyamalan what they are supposed to. Both kids are Australian, by the way. Oxenbould’s rapping in the movie just seems to be there because the young actor can do it, and it fills out the running time. But, boy, it’s annoying. Dunagan and McRobbie (Scottish), however, are effective and quite creepy and would be even better in a better movie.

Along with Woody Allen’s Irrational Man, this is the second movie in a week that struggles by to fill an hour and a half when there’s ideal material for a brisk 30-minute short film. It has its moments, one or two of them even eerie and even quite scary, but not enough to fill the 90 minutes. The scary moments suggest an altogether classier, more consistent chiller than M Night can deliver.

The film feels it needs to explain its mystery in a shock twist, but actually a non-revelation would keep up the air of sinister mystery the film is going for. It’s like showing the monster, when just suggesting it is so much scarier.

But how’s this for clumsy script-writing? Shyamalan cheerily goes for bashing pensioners as loony and incontinent. After all, old folks aren’t the movie’s target audience. The boy is repeatedly shown as germ-phobic and is appalled to find Pop Pop’s used incontinence pants. But this is only the long-contrived set-up for a disgusting climactic scene which no spoiler alert would make me divulge. This is indeed horrific, but not in a good way.

This isn’t any really better than Shyamalan’s The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth, Lady In the Water or The Village, all critical duds. But, with its found footage stuff, it is a carefully judged, low-budget ($5million) effort that should attract enough curiosity to pull it into profit.

On the plus side, there’s the eerie and scary bits, it’s only 90 minutes, it drops its shakily-based found footage ideas soon enough and Shyamalan doesn’t take on an acting role.

The film’s weak title replaces the odd original Sundowning. Shyamalan said he prepared three different cuts of the film – pure comedy, pure horror and this final one that falls (awkwardly) somewhere in between. He self-produced it with his fee from After Earth (2013).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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