M. Night Shyamalan made his return to the box office last fall, and this time with a film like he has never produced before. His previous two big screen attempts, "The Last Airbender" and "After Earth," weren’t complete busts, but they definitely weren’t very good. This time around, he ditched the Hollywood scene, and instead, self-funded this effort. The result was "The Visit," and it easily surpasses everything he's directed in the last ten years.
"The Visit" is a thriller in which the basis of the plot is to beware of… grandparents? This is different from his normal, supernatural direction.The opening scene features the mother, played by Kathryn Hahn. She essentially explains the entire plot: after a horrible falling out with her parents (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) soon after graduating high school, she ran away with her boyfriend. 15 years and two kids later, she’s been left behind to be a single mom. Her parents finally reached out to her because they wanted to meet her children. The emotionally scarred kids, Becca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould), leave to visit them for a nice week on the farm.
Becca is a 15-year-old aspiring filmmaker, who wants to make a documentary about her mom’s relationship with her grandparents — naturally, this is a found footage movie. Despite this, it is much more heavily crafted than other found-footage films, like the "Paranormal Activity" series. It also avoids always feeling ominous; shots with beautiful imagery are thrown in throughout the film.
DeJonge and Oxenbould were excellent. Despite being relatively unknown and somewhat inexperienced, they played their parts like veterans. DeJonge was convincing as an angst-filled teenager who is determined to sound way older and smarter than she is — my favorite line of hers is, “I hate sappy movies. I find them torturous.” Oxenbould is downright hilarious — he perfectly plays an awkward, free-style-rapping middle school student who isn’t sure how to connect with his long-lost grandparents — “Do you know who Tyler the Creator is? I’ve got that kind of sound… people say.”
"The Visit" is definitely one of the most successful found-footage films I have ever seen. It executed the homemade movie feel without being a headache-inducing chaos. It managed to be completely creepy at all the right moments, yet also utterly hilarious throughout nearly the whole thing. Even some of the most dramatic moments still manage to have a layer of humor. Overall, "The Visit" emerged as an entertaining thriller amid the montage of average horror films that spawn from Hollywood every year.
