The Visit – Film Review by Cormac Fitzgerald

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Writer: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould,Deanna Dunagan, Peter Mc Robbie

Some of the best horror movies are the ones that play upon our everyday fears and worries: in this way the audience’s thoughts and feelings can be exploited and used against them to elicit the most effective scares. The Visit does exactly this by exploiting the detached and somewhat fearful relationship the young have towards the elderly and coupling it with the consequences of familial breakdown to make a scary, wacky and surprisingly funny movie.

Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are two teenagers off to meet their maternal grandparents for the first time. The children of a single parent, their mother (Kathryn Hann) ran away from home about 15 years previously with an older man and hasn’t spoken to her parents since. The children’s father has since left them and now they’re off to connect with the grandparents they never knew deep in the snowy Pennsylvania countryside. Becca is an aspiring filmmaker and brings two cameras along to document their journey and the entire movie is shown through this found footage technique.

Things go well in Pennsylvania at first – Nana (Deanna Dunagan) bakes cookies while Pop Pop (Peter Mc Robbie) seems friendly and kind. However, soon the two begin to act very strange. Pop Pop seems to be hiding secrets in the shed while Nana walks around the house at night making strange noises and banging on the children’s door. At first it’s easy to write off their behaviour as the confusing actions of the elderly, but as things get stranger the children start to fear for their safety.

There is a lot of hype surrounding The Visit as director M. Night Shyamalan’s return to form. Shyamalan is well regarded for his earlier movies, like the Sixth Sense. However, over the past decade he has declined in stature with a number of high-budget, low-grossing movies. The Visit is set to be his return to low-budget form, with Shyamalan writing the screenplay himself and sinking €5m of his own money into its production.

The movie has kindness and attention to character not seen in most horror movies. There is a strong storyline of runaway children and wayward parents and the plot also unfolds naturally with tension building throughout, so that when the trademark Shyamalan twist comes near the end it doesn’t feel tacked on or cynical. The action and scares can be a bit repetitive though as the movie builds to its climax, which, when it comes, is suitably disturbing and very well executed. There is also a consistent supply of absurd humour throughout the movie that fits well into the narrative as a whole. The actors all play their parts well, with the two children and the elderly grandparents complimenting each other very nicely. Deanna Dunagan stands out as the creepy and disturbing grandmother.

The picture certainly isn’t without its faults. Becca and Tyler are very polarising characters – it takes a while to warm to them and if you don’t then you won’t enjoy the movie. Tyler raps throughout the movie which gets a bit annoying (although it is an important part of his character and not just a quirk for the sake of it). Becca’s constant narration of cinematic techniques can feel a bit too much like the director trying to talk to the audience in a quirky bit of self-referentiality that gets a bit tiresome. Sometimes the dialogue can really feel like it’s too preachy, with both central characters engaging in critiques of reality TV and pop culture that don’t seem realistic, again seeming as though Mr Shyamalan is giving his views through the mouthpiece of the characters.

That’s said, The Visit is a great movie that takes family strife and prejudices against the elderly and turns them into strong horror material. It is funny, touching, and frightening –  which is more than can be said for a lot of horrors.