STAY A WHILE
The Visit
Review by Paul Preston
He’s baaaaaaaack!
M. Night Shyamalan returns to fine form delivering another thriller worthy of a lot of post-screening discussion with “The Visit”.
I’m going to lead with the one thing missing from this Shyamalan film that he’s known for, besides plot twists – high production value. In his best efforts (“The Sixth Sense”, “Unbreakable”), Shyamalan has shown a real cinematic eye with a carefully-placed camera and mood-setting lighting. It’s not that Shyamalan fails to live up to a high standard with “The Visit”, it’s just that none of that is necessary, ‘cause he’s ventured into the Blumhouse world of the “found footage”/POV-cam movie.
For those of you uninitiated into the world of Blumhouse, it’s the wildly prolific film company of producer Jason Blum, behind the “Sinister”, “Insidious” and “Paranormal Activity” franchises, and the perfect entity to team up with M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan’s been languishing in projects that were not in his wheelhouse. Although “The Last Airbender” opened to a huge 4th of July weekend in 2010, it was widely trashed by critics and mostly disliked by those who saw it. His follow up, “After Earth”, was proof that he did not fit in well with big studio summer movies.
Along comes Blumhouse, known for taking a movie like “Unfriended” with a budget of one million dollars, and guiding it to a world-wide gross of $62 Million. Even in the domestic box office, where $22 Million doesn’t sound like a huge movie, it does when “The Gallows” cost $100,000 to make. “The Visit” failed to beat “The Perfect Guy” in ticket sales its opening weekend, so it won’t make “Signs”-like numbers, but Shyamalan wins as his $27 Million opening weekend gross is over five times its budget.
Why note all this business nonsense? It’s important to show the steps of a comeback – returning to material that made you great, smart partnerships, release date where you can win – in hopes that others (talkin’ to you, Sandler) can follow suit. But now let me tell you why “The Visit” is great.
First of all – total crowd pleaser. By now, you know something’s up when you go to an M. Night Shyamalan film. There’s going to be something mystical, something other-worldy, who-the-hell-KNOWS-what, and that had the crowd I saw it with strictly attentive. Little talking, NO PHONES! I mean, there were no phones brought out during this movie! They should put that on the poster.
The film is about two kids who go to visit their grandparents, whom they’ve never met, while their mom takes a much-needed vacation. The mother is estranged from her parents, so no one really knows what to expect when the kids show up. Then the grandparents begin acting…odd. What’s the reason for this behavior? It’s an excellent question that kept the crowd riveted the whole film. This slow-draw into the film by Shyamalan’s script worked wonders to where every scare and every plot turn drew great responses from the theater.
I mentioned the post-viewing conversation would be a bit rabid, and all my talk of the film after the fact just made it better. Every seemingly-innocuous plot development had meaning, Shyamalan crossed his “t”s and dotted his “i”s, making for a really tight script with great performances. Kathryn Hahn is the only actor you may recognize, but most likely from her comedic work. Here, she deftly handles authentic fluster as the children’s mother and brings home a stinger of a monologue at the film’s finale.
The children are quite good as well. Once upon a time (maybe, I don’t know, around “Aliens”?), children were the death of a movie. Now they carry them. Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould are funny and worth following as the leads in the film in that they don’t do stupid things because they’re kids, they do THINGS because they’re kids and it either does or doesn’t go well for them. Throughout, they bring the humor (well, some of the grandparents odd behavior is funny, too). So expecting a kid to be bad in a film or expecting a child’s actions in a film to wreck the movie isn’t worth your time as much anymore.
And let’s get back to that payoff. I told you the reasons I stuck with “The Visit”, so the payoff better have been good, it was obvious the whole film was leading to something. IT WAS GOOD. It was gasp and scream-worthy all over the theater, right up to an emotional payoff that was a strong as any scare in the film.
But sorry, folks, can’t talk any more about it. It’s Shyamalan! And he’s back.
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Release Date: September 11, 2015
Run Time: 94 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: PG-13
Distributor: Blumhouse Productions/Universal Studios
