The Visit

I’m pretty sure visits to Grandma and Grandpa’s house aren’t supposed to go down like this.

The Visit, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, follows two siblings, Rebecca Jamison (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler Jamison (Ed Oxenbould), as they embark on a one-week long sleepover with their grandparents, played by Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie. Due to a terrible falling out between their grandparents and mother (Kathryn Hahn) when she was younger, the cinematically inclined Rebecca and her aspiring rapper brother have never actually met their grandparents, let alone spoken to them before. Rebecca, ever the budding filmmaker, decides to document the proceedings to not only showcase their first interaction with their “new” grandparents but to use said footage to try and get to the bottom of what happened between her mother and grandparents all those years ago.

Then the shit hits the fan…as well as the inside of some adult diapers…no joke.

First things first, this is a horror film. But it’s also kind of not. The humor, while obviously not the main selling point of the movie, is done to wonderful effect that not only gets us liking our sibling protagonists right off the bat, but allows us to let our guard down and really feel the scares when they rear their ugly heads. For example, when Tyler spits vicious freestyle verses into the camera you can’t help but laugh. His back and forth with Rebecca is so well done that it sells their bond and their personalities and grounds the film in a way that gives the filmmakers a lot of room to bring them down to terrifying depths once the plot really gets going. And when it does, everything that happens really makes the wheels in your head spin to try and figure out what in the Hell is actually going on here.

Simply put, Nana and Pop Pop are some messed up people. Not only do they keep a strict 9:30pm bedtime/curfew for their grandchildren, but they’re also always doing or saying things that are just a bit off from normal. At first, everything is really just chalked up to them being “old”, a reasonable excuse for any elderly person to be sure, but when Nana accidentally ruins the camera on Rebecca’s laptop (not the laptop itself mind you, just the camera), it’s a weirdly accurate thing to do, and as Rebecca and Tyler’s Mom points out in their blind Skype sessions, they’re old and haven’t been around kids in quite some time so cut them some slack. Fair enough, but then the script brushes that under the rug for the time being as it adds just enough doubt to the scene to keep us wondering if it really was just and accident. Then there’s the 9:30pm curfew. Why so early? Well, logically the film tells us it’s because they’re “old” and need their rest or, after seeing the inherent weirdness of these people, is it actually because something more sinister is going down come nightfall?

Regardless of what excuses are made, it’s these nighttime sequences that really stand out. They aren’t necessarily the scariest scenes ever put to film, but they are extremely effective and do a good job of keeping viewers on edge and wondering what might be happening with Nana and Pop Pop. They give us just enough of a glimpse into the craziness of the situation these kids are thrust into while always adding a layered touch of doubt to really unsettle you once you start mulling over all of the possible reasons as to why Nana and Pop Pop seem to be completely off their rockers.

Then there’s the requisite Shyamalan twist and fret not filmgoer, what a twist it is. The set up and payoff for this particular twist was so expertly done that it makes you look at the film in a completely different light as well as make you question even more so what in the actual fuck is happening in this household. The twist was so brilliantly layered into the story that when it’s finally revealed, you kind of just sit there, a chill running down your spine with your jaw open, anxiously waiting to see how things could possibly play out going forward.

While effective, the twist also brought up some of its own problems; mostly in the way the characters were portrayed following the reveal. I don’t want to go into this too much as to save you from one of the coolest twists in Shyamalan’s career, but just know that the scenes that follow had me swinging back and forth as to whether it was handled properly or not.

As for the found footage format of the film (say that five times fast) I was surprised at how well it worked. The fact that Rebecca is making a documentary is a valid reason for why the camera is always on and filming and it helps the movie dodge a few of the more cliché aspects of the genre but not all. While there were a few instances where the shots seemed a little forced, I was more amazed at the organic nature of the framing and how each shot could start out as a normal POV then play out to a completely different angle and composition by the end of the take; a technique that is used constantly throughout the film to great effect. It’s probably the best looking found footage movie in recent memory if not the most creative.

One of the last things I should touch on and yet another aspect of the film that came out of left field, especially for a movie like this, was the added emotional weight the story put forth. The idea of family problems and relationships being the real driving force behind this movie was an inspired choice and deftly handled. While not really the central point of the film, the emotional beats helped add that extra dimensionality to the struggles of the children, their mother, and eventually their grandparents. This wasn’t something that was needed in the film but it’s nice to see considering most horror films are light on character moments and heavy on shock value.

While not the super scary fright fest that the trailers might lead you to believe, The Visit is a film that is a relatively funny, fairly tense, sometimes emotional, and above all twisted journey that never seems what it’s crack up to be.

To Grandma’s house we go, indeed.