After a long line of less than wonderful films, the infamous M. Night Shyamalan was able to come up with a pretty decent horror flick: The Visit.
This is his first entry into the subgenre of found footage, and while many moviegoers have issues with this filming technique, he was able to make some genuinely tense, enjoyable moments with it.
The Visit is about siblings Rebecca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) who go on a trip to visit the grandparents they have never met. Rebecca wants to make a documentary about her grandparents, because there seems to be some mystery surrounding the events leading up to their mother Paula (Kathryn Hahn) leaving them. They soon find out that their grandma Doris (Deanna Dunagan) and grandpa John (Peter McRobbie) are a lot more bizarre than your average grandparents.
Shyamalan made good use of horror conventions found in other recent found footage films like Paranormal Activity. During the day, the grandparents seemed normal enough despite the occasional oddity, such as when Doris frantically stalks the kids under the porch during a game of hide and seek. The evenings–after 9:30pm specifically, according to John–is when things start to take a turn for the terrifying.
Of course, a film by Shyamalan would not be complete without a twist, and this one is wholly frightening and reasonably well executed.
The film’s weakest points come from its acting. DeJonge and Oxenbould do an okay job portraying the film’s curious kids, which is to be expected from relatively unknown child actors. Shyamalan’s script incorporates a great deal of modern slang used by Tyler, such as “swerve” or “throwing shade,” and fortunately these are performed in a way which does not make them too cringe-worthy.
Dunagan and McRobbie do a great job playing the unsettling grandparents, both through spoken and physical acting. Hahn seems to be trying too hard in her scenes as the mother which ruins the immersion a bit; this is not helped by the fact that she makes most of her appearances from crystal-clear, high-definition Skype calls.
In all, it was a pretty good return for the man whose last good horror film was The Village, over ten years ago. I would give it four out of five stars.
