The Visit

For over a decade now I have repeatedly said that I would never write or pronounce M. Night Shyamalan’s name correctly until he once again put out a decent film. Lady in the Water, The Crappening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth are easily some of the worst pieces of trash I’ve ever seen in a theater; and that’s saying something when you consider the fact that I’ve also seen Ridley Scott’s The Counselor and all three of The Fantastic Four films in the theater on their opening weekends. But the fact that I didn’t include eight A’s and twenty five L’s in his name this time around, should give you some indication of how I felt about his latest effort The Visit.

In this particular film, Shyamalan was smart in that he chose to prey on the one thing we are all afraid of in this country, old people! Think about it, ever since Cloak & Dagger came out in the 80’s, every movie with old people in it portrays them as either killers, crazy people, or zombies; and sometimes all three.

Well in this movie we are introduced to Becca and Tyler, two kids who are on their way to visiting their grandparents for the first time ever. The reason why they are seeing them for the first time is because their mother hasn’t had a relationship with her parents ever since she left home at the age of 19 to run off with her high school substitute teacher. The two of them instantly fell in love and were determined to be together regardless of the consequences. Her parents clearly didn’t approve of this and apparently when she left, something so awful happened that neither she nor her parents ever talk about it.

Well Becca sees this trip as an opportunity to heal some old wounds and to help her mother reconcile with her parents. Her mother has decided to pass on the opportunity to go with her kids on this trip as she is not quite ready to face them. And as you learn more and more about these two old kooks, you can see why.

The first few days are full of what you would normally expect to see from kids interacting with their old grandparents for the first time. But as the week goes on, more and more weird stuff starts happening. They have logical and well thought out excuses for them but the entire time, the kids know that something isn’t quite right. They decide to try and get to the bottom of it and when they do, the results are terrifying.

Now in the past, that word meant something completely different for Shyamalan and your experience with his art but in reference to this movie, it’s actually a good thing. This film moves at a snail’s pace at times but there’s enough oddball activity that takes place at night to help make up for it. And another thing that helps is the fact that this movie is actually quite funny. Tyler’s desire to be a rapper leads to some pretty weak but hilarious freestyles from the 13 year old.

By the time you get to last act of the film and you finally know what’s going on, you will never want to go to your grandparent’s place alone again. Who knows, they just may ask you to get in the oven too! It hurts every bone in my body to say this but Shyamalan has actually put together a fairly decent film and I can’t help but give it a rating of kind of FRESH!