‘The Visit’ Shines as Much as it Fails (FILM REVIEW)

[rating=6.00]

M. Night Shyamalan is in desperate need of a hit. Despite coming out of the gate strong with a trio of unforgettable films—The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs—the director has floundered in recent years with one lackluster film after another, becoming a pale imitation of himself and losing some ground in the process. He’s certainly shown his capabilities well, but with more and more movies like The Village and The Happening and The Last Airbender crowding his resume, it’s easy to forget just why we loved the director to begin with.

His latest film, The Visit, isn’t quite the return to form we’ve all be waiting for, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction for Shyamalan, and could be suggestive of an interesting new phase in his career.

For this outing, the director has teamed with the top name in modern horror, Jason Blum, whose Blumhouse studios have consistently produced some of the most and least memorable horror movies of the last decade. It’s a fitting marriage between director and studio, really, as Shyamalan shares the same distinction—for every good movie he makes, there’s an equally not good movie waiting to take his thunder. The Visit, as it is, is only just okay, but that’s certainly better than terrible.

The film follows teenagers Becca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) as they set out on a weeklong visit to their grandparents’ (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) house for the first time. Prior to their birth, their mother (Kathryn Hahn) had a massive falling out with her parents, estranging the family for the last decade and a half. Now, since their father has left the family and been absent for a few years, the kids are interested in learning more about their family and where their mother came from. Over the course of their trip to grandma and grandpa’s,  the kids learn their grandparents are suffering from various forms of dementia, which turns their visit into a nightmare as more and more their grandparents display violent and dangerous tendencies.

Like many Blumhouse movies, The Visit is framed as a found footage piece. I tend to balk at the whole found footage phenomenon but, I must admit, in Shyamalan’s hands the sub-genre shows its strengths. It helps that, in this case, the framework provides a deeper insight into this particular narrative. Becca, you see, is an aspiring filmmaker, and has taken this opportunity to produce a documentary about her mother’s parents as a way to help her heal from the damage of her youth. This is certainly one of the more imaginative ways a movie has justified its found footage skeleton, and it’s effective at what it does, to a point. However, things get somewhat problematic as the story progresses.

Arguably, the problems of The Visit are less problems of the film itself than of its genre. As with most found footage, there are jump scares aplenty which serve nice for cheap screams but don’t really add anything to the overall vibe. It could be that Shyamalan has attempted a sort of found footage deconstruction and, at times, The Visit appears to play to expectations knowingly, as if to make a point in regards to the genre’s limits. I admit, viewed in this light the film works a little better, but I’m not exactly sure that’s what Shyamalan was going for. At what point does playing to conventions to prove a point become just another exercise in familiarity?

It is, perhaps, in its familiarity that The Visit begins to show its weaknesses. Nothing unexpected ever happens, and even the now famed “Shyamalan Twist” is telegraphed entirely too early (I had it nailed before the first act completed). When the audience knows what to expect it’s hard to build genuine terror, and in this case we know what to expect from two different sources. We know how found footage films play out, and we know to expect Shyamalan to work in a twist. In this way, The Visit is its own worst enemy.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Though The Visit never quite works its way into meta territory, it does appear to have a certain amount of self-awareness which elevates it slightly from the pack. Becca’s filmmaking aspirations allow for a certain degree of commentary on image composition and plot structure, which effectively guides viewers through the framework of The Visit in a believable manner. Moreover, there’s a lot of humor to found in the film, which serves as a nice juxtaposition to the sense of horror the kids are in. I would’ve preferred a little less emphasis on the humor, however, as the comedy does get obnoxious after a while. I can only take so much of an untalented 13 year old white kid’s attempts at rapping, and that limit was reached pretty quickly.

Still, The Visit isn’t a terrible movie. It is, at times, quite fun. Even though I was able to discern the shocking twist entirely too early (as I suspect most will) it was kind of interesting to watch the film knowing more than the characters did. There are plenty of aha-moments for the careful viewer, which work well enough. At the very least, The Visit is worth watching. Shyamalan may not have knocked it out of the park, but its certain his best effort in years. Hopefully, he can continue this momentum and return to his former glory as he moves into the latest stage of his career.

The Visit is now playing in theaters everywhere.