The Visit

When we see eerie and foreboding film fare, they all seem to meld together in looking so much alike, i.e. 'slasher films' and certain horror films. After a while it's difficult to trust a filmmaker with this particular genre considering they are seemingly stamped from the same mold. The Paranormal franchise and the Sinister franchise, to mention a couple, are typical fare to stimulate our fear emotion and do nothing more. So with this, I was hesitant to go see M. Night Shyamalan's "The Visit", and after seeing it, should I have just bagged it?

This is a terrifying story about a brother, Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) and his older sister, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) who are sent by their mom (Kathryn Hahn) to their grandparents' remote Pennsylvania farm for a weeklong trip. The kids have never met their grandparents, but once they discover that the elderly couple, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) is involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home are growing smaller every day they are there. Whatever could these to old folks have done to scare and certainly question these two kids?

Others to round out the cast are Celia Keenan-Bolger as Stacey, Samuel Stricklen as Conductor, Patch Darragh as Dr. Sam and Jorge Cordova as Miguel.

This was directed with delineated expertise by the incomparable M. Night Shyamalan ("Wide Awake" '98, "The Sixth Sense" '99, "Unbreakable" 2000, "Signs" '02, "The Village" '04, "Lady in the Water" '06, "The Happening" '08, "The Last Airbender" '10, "After Earth" '13). This guy has that ability to set his audience up, with emotions from his cast, and pull the rug right out from under you that constantly throws his audience into a tailspin--it sort of has become his trademark. This was also written by Shyamalan (Same resume), and where he excels in the director's chair, his writing can be a real hit and miss. Certainly the crowning glory to Shyamalan's career has to be with "The Sixth Sense", because this was incredibly well written and directed, so it's like he raised the bar on himself so high in the first part of his career, it's been tough to find that screenplay that's worked as well as Sixth Sense. As with most of his screenplays, he starts off with a tight storyline, and before you know it, it careens into some weird situation that's extremely difficult to even grasp. Don't get me wrong, I can handle weird, quirky, obscure, but when the storyline goes off into something that one can't grasp mentally, even though this is an incredible premise, it boggles the brain to a point that you simply can't explain, and apparently neither can Shyamalan. This had potential, but it constantly kept getting mired down with things that no one could handle. Maybe this is a way of being avant-garde, not sure.

Trust me, I'm not saying that Shyamalan should give us the typical status quo, but if the audience gets something that they cannot even wrap their heads around, what's the point? If you like this guy's work, you'll be pleased, because you'll know you're on familiar ground, however if you are new to Shyamalan's work, you may walk out of the multiplex more perplexed than when you went in.

Out of 4 Stars: 2.5                               Rated: PG-13                                     94mins.