Review: The Visit

Ed Oxenbould and his verbose wannabe filmmaker older sister Olivia DeJonge go to spend a few days with their maternal grandparents while mum (Kathryn Hahn) has a little ‘Me (get wild and crazy) Time’. They’ve never met their grandparents, whom their mother estranged herself from a long time ago for reasons she won’t talk about. Picked up at the train station by elderly Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie quickly get settled in with their Nana and ‘Pop Pop’. However, after a while, Oxenbould starts to have suspicions about the old folks. Something just doesn’t seem right about them. Nana runs around naked late at night, and completely freaks out when wannabe documentarian DeJonge questions them on why their mother left. People also come around from the local mental hospital where the elderly couple used to volunteer. It seems they haven’t been around lately. Eventually the kids decide to set up a camera at night to see what it records. Things get weird. Really, really weird. All I’ll say is it involves board games, a poopy nappy, and a twist 20 minutes before the finish.

 

If this fairytale-tinged 2015 M. Night Shyamalan (“The Sixth Sense”, “Signs”, “The Happening”) horror-comedy had been released 20-30 years earlier, I would’ve been a whole lot more impressed by it. Seen in this era, it’s very familiar but well-directed and mildly entertaining. Hey, it’s a lot better than “Lady in the Water” and “The Village”, so I’ll take what I can damn well get.

 

I think Shyamalan (a much better director than he is a writer) lays on the “Hansel and Gretel” meets “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” stuff a tad thick (there’s an oven…), meaning that even if you don’t guess exactly where it’s headed, you’ll certainly have a fair idea of what to expect thematically. I’ve been begging for the guy to let someone else take over writing duties, as it’s really not his strong suit. That lack of originality hurts the film a tad, as does Aussie child actor Ed Oxenbould, who will be very, very polarising (Olivia DeJonge is an Aussie as well, apparently). I don’t want to pick on the kid, but I have to report that I find him a very squirmy presence on screen. He’s an OK actor, I can’t deny that. However, he’s insanely annoying, whether the kid can help it or not. And the writer-director indulges Oxenbould way too much, even allowing him to hippity hop during the film (and during the end credits). If there’s anything worse than hippity hopping (oh yeah, that’s what I’m calling it), it’s a squirmy little kid hippity hopping. It’s cringe-inducing stuff, though those who don’t find rap as inherently embarrassing as I do might feel otherwise. I also wasn’t overly keen on the film basically employing a ‘found footage’ aesthetic, though it’s not quite a ‘found footage’ film exactly (There’s title cards from time to time and scenes that aren’t filmed by the characters in the film).

 

Thankfully, there’s still quite a bit to like about this film, including a dark sense of humour, which was nicely disarming. Since the film was too familiar to really work for me as horror (though it’s not bad just clichéd), I was at least able to embrace it somewhat as a comedy. I especially enjoyed the creepy performance by stage veteran Deanna Dunagan. She’s outstanding, actually, and the film narrowly gets away with basically making fun of addled-brained, incontinent elderly people. It’s a very, very weird and disarmingly funny film, with Peter McRobbie also fine, while Kathryn Hahn is pretty funny as the kids’ mother who is partaking in what looks like the middle-aged equivalent of a ‘Girls Gone Wild’ weekend. It’s a slight but appreciated variant on her standard ‘horny, pathetic woman’ schtick from every other film you’ve seen her in. Despite the use of handheld camerawork at times, this is a good-looking movie as you’d expect from Shyamalan, and certainly very watchable. I was rather glad that the film was free of the mopey, muted tone of most other Shyamalan films.

 

Deanna Dunagan is terrific and the film is frequently amusing and weird enough to be worth a look. However, an overall air of familiarity to the plot and a truly cringe-worthy Ed Oxenbould do make this one a bit tougher to like than it could’ve been. Still, like the underrated “The Happening” and “After Earth”, I can at least give this one a (weak) recommendation.  

 

Rating: B-