Visit, The (2015)

Synopsis: Brother and sister, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), have never met their grandparents who have been estranged from the family for many years since their mother (Kathryn Hahn) left home in difficult circumstances. But now Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) have invited their grandchildren to visit them for a week on their farm in Pennsylvania. The visit starts off well enough until Becca and Tyler start to notice strange things happening in the night and slowly the shocking truth about their grandparents becomes clear to them.

Remember when a new M Night Shyamalan film was something to look forward to? Those were his early heydays when he was spooking and thrilling his audiences with films like The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000) and Signs (2002)  But then things got increasingly silly, slipshod and implausible (yes, I’m saying The Sixth Sense and Signs were, in context, plausible), culminating in recent low points such as The Last Airbender (2010) and the lamentable After Earth (2013). But somehow he still manages to get new films onto the screen and this low budget outing, whilst falling far short of his best work, is still possibly his most entertaining and successful film of the past dozen or so years

For a start, it’s pretty creepy and, surprisingly, it’s very funny. This is helped a lot by the performance of young Australian actor, Oxenbould  (seen earlier this year in the surprise Australian hit, Paper Planes) who balances an astute portrayal of a precocious teenager and annoying little brother with great wit and comic timing. His humour in the face of the weird behaviour of his grandparents and the overly serious approach of his sister to the documentary film she’s making of their visit allows us to view the more bizarre occurrences through his incredulity rather than our own, which is a neat way of stringing us along until the big twist (not as good as The Sixth Sense, but still very satisfying) comes along and shifts up a gear into the scarier final act of the film.

The weaker elements, though, come from the choice to go down the path of films like 2009’s Paranormal Activity in relying on the hand-held ‘found footage’ style to tell the story. With the right conceit, this style can be really effective, but here it feels a bit contrived and the introduction of the second camera, although visually necessary, is a bit of a stretch. For me, at least, there are too many times when I find myself wondering how either Becca or Tyler managed to get that shot or why they had the camera there at that moment, which only serves to pull me out of the movie, and that’s not good in a scary flick.

The ending, too, feels weak, allowing the horrifying truth that emerges to be dealt with more easily and more straightforwardly than one might hope for in the final moments  of a film that, for the most part, trades on a heightened sense of realism and some  knowing nods to the tropes of both the horror genre and the darker of the fairytales.  Still, the plusses of this enjoyable and mildly scary movie outweigh the negatives and that hasn’t been the case in a Shyamalan film for quite a while.

 

 

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