The Visit—Movie Review

The Visit

by Peter J. O'Connell

The Visit. Released: Sept. 2015. Runtime: 94 mins. Rated: PG-13 for disturbing thematic material, including terror, violence and some nudity, and for brief language.

Director/writer M. Night Shyamalan earned a niche in cinematic history in 1999 with his The Sixth Sense. This hit film contained one of the all-time classic surprise endings, which—surprisingly enough—neither the large audiences that saw the movie in its long run nor the scores of critics who reviewed it revealed to those who had not yet seen it.

Shyamalan's films since Sense have featured twists and surprise endings, but none have come near equaling the 1999 hit in either creative quality or audience appeal. That is, until now with The Visit. No, The Visit does not equal Sense, but it comes much closer than anything else that Shyamalan has done in the past 15 years.

The visit of the title occurs when a single mom (Kathryn Hahn) receives a request from her parents, from whom she has been completely estranged for many years, to send her 15-year-old daughter, Becca (Olivia DeJonge), and Becca's 13-year-old brother, Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), to stay with them for a week. Because of the estrangement, the kids and their grandparents have never met.The mom agrees, and the two kids eagerly depart by train for the grandparents' home in wintry rural Pennsylvania. The kids are particularly eager because Becca hopes to make a film of the visit that will help reconcile her mom with the grandparents. Becca always has her camera at the ready. Tyler helps with the filming, but he is more interested in becoming a white freestyle rapper than a filmmaker.

The oldsters Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop-Pop (Peter McRobbie) welcome the kids, who settle into their mom's old room. The kids like Nana and Pop-Pop, but quickly realize that they will have to tolerate what they feel to be eccentricities and problems associated with old age manifesting themselves in Nana and Pop-Pop. Pop-Pop is incontinent, dresses up for a nonexistent costume ball, assaults a man for no reason, and cleans a rifle by placing the barrel of it in his mouth. Nana is fond of crawling on all fours, running about, projectile vomiting, scratching the walls, being nude or seminude, telling strange stories, and asking Becca to clean the oven by getting completely inside it.

Because most of Nana's antics occur at night, Pop-Pop tells the kids not to leave their room after 9:30 p.m. He also advises them that because of a mold problem, they must not go into the basement. Becca and Tyler are uneasy about these developments, but because of their desire for family reconciliation, they decide to be especially tolerant because, as Becca says, old people are “weird but nice.” As the movie unfolds, we see that she is at least half right!

“Don't go in the basement.” Yes, The Visit is a horror movie, but it's flecked with intelligent humor, particularly in Tyler's hilarious attempts at rapping. Amusing, but thoughtful, comments about family relations and aging also are made, and Becca's incessant filming is a sly satirical jab at the “found footage” technique featured in many horror movies since that other 1999 hit (not by Shyamalan) The Blair Witch Project. A movie that merges drama and comedy is sometimes referred to as a “dramedy.”

Maybe we could call The Visit a “horromedy.”

The cast of The Visit is little known, but that may change now. The five major roles are all excellently done. DeJonge and Oxenbould (both are Australian) are very appealing without being “cute.” It's well worth paying a visit to Shyamalan's “comeback” film. The Visit pushes some generic buttons, but the “reveal” should prove a shuddering surprise.

“Footnote” to the film: The “look” of The Visit may remind many moviegoers of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. That should not be surprising, for the film was shot in the area of Pennsylvania where Wyeth lived and that he depicted in many works.