The Visit (2015)

So, I have a love/hate relationship with M. Night Shyamalan.  Sixth Sense, loved! Unbreakable, hated. Signs, loved. The Village, meh. Devil, double meh. Lady in the Water, hated. The Last Airbender, I loved and the rest of the world hated. The Happening, parts of it I thought could turn out to be a decent creepy movie. Then of course, Wahlberg spoke, and that killed the creepy, and turned it right to corny.

The Visit..I can't say I loved it, but close, so close.  I really, really enjoyed watching it. I actually laughed a lot, and not in a bad way, genuine laughter from lines like Sarah McLaughlin said out of fear, to a scene where the boy is imitating his grandmother's "Sundowning" syndrome, that boy stole the whole movie. This kid delivered.

So we've got characters Becca and Tyler (Olvia DeJonge, who is also brilliant in this film, and Ed Oxenbould). Just a month ago or so I watched the movie Paper Planes about World Paper Plane Championships in Japan.It's an Australian film, and Ed is an Aussie, though you wouldn't know it in The Visit, so it was really refreshing to see him again so soon, and in a much more complex and mature role.

Becca and Tyler are brother and sister, and their mom has this I haven't spoken to my parents in 15 years issue. Her parents want to meet their grandchildren for the first time, and she hesitatingly agrees.

Becca and Tyler's grandparents, played by Deanna Dunagen and Peter McRobbie, seem a little off from the start. Becca is creating a documentary about the visit, and at first when I saw part of the movie was done in the "found footage" genre, I thought I was going to hate it, because I'm getting really tired of the hand-held camera point-of-view shooting that seems to be over saturating the industry right now, but this was nicely done. M. Night did a good job of using some hand-held footage, but kept a majority of the film in a nice level view. 

The last 10 minutes or so, that's worth the whole movie. It took off in a direction that with all my film viewing experience, I probably should have seen coming, but I didn't and I loved it, especially when you started piecing together some of the things that had been said, like visitors from the hospital that the grandparents counseled at.

I loved the acting. The pace was decent. It wasn't an in your face horror movie by any means. It has that subtlety you can expect from M. Night where you only gets peeks of the creepiness that lurks within, and that works for this story.

If I were to rank this movie, I would give it a very generous 4 out of 5, because the bits of unexpected humor, especially from M. Night, I really enjoyed. It was those little bits of humor that I loved in the Signs that endeared me to it so much.

Pop some popcorn, turn the lights down low, and watch this movie.