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THE VISIT (2015) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

the visit (2015) movie

Genre | Suspense Thriller

Classification | M

Running time | 94 minutes

Released | 23 September 2015

cast

Olivia DeJonge ... Becca
Ed Oxenbould ... Tyler
Deanna Dunagan ... Nana
Peter McRobbie ... Pop Pop
Kathryn Hahn ... Mom
Celia Keenan-Bolger ... Stacey
Samuel Stricklen ... Conductor
Patch Darragh ... Dr. Sam
Jorge Cordova ... Miguel

director

M. Night Shyamalan

writer

M. Night Shyamalan ... (written by)

cinematographer

Maryse Alberti

music

film editor

Luke Ciarrocchi

box office result

Worldwide $98,450,062

Australia $2,162,810

North America $65,206,105

the best dialogue

Mom: At the end of high school, I fell in love with a substitute English teacher. It was quite a scandal. Corin didn't start out a bad guy, though. We were together about 10 years and we had two kids. And then he fell in love with someone in a Starbucks, and moved to Palo Alto, California. Kind of severed relations with the three of us. My parents, if I were defending them, which I'm not, had said, back in the day, that he had an "impatient eye."They didn't like him. Week I left, things escalated. My parents cursed at me, which was, like, crazy unusual. And it ended, one afternoon, very badly. I left at 19, haven't spoken to my parents in 15 years. Whatever. That's just the history.
Mom: Recently, my parents looked me up on the Internet. Asked to meet their grandchildren. Spend a week with them. I looked my parents up, they have a counseling website. People love them. Ironically, they counsel people, which is a hoot. Whatever. I told the kids. They said they wanted to go. I told them I didn't want them to go. They said they were gonna go anyway. They're brats. What can I tell you? And my 15-year-old wants to make a documentary about this.
Becca: [from off-screen] Wait, wait, wait. Go back. Um, describe the events on the day you left your parents' farm at 19.
Mom: I did something I don't choose to tell you. If they choose to tell you, that's their right. Okay? I want to do this for you. Listen, they're good people. Ask them. Can I be done with my part? I still got to get you guys packed.

Tyler: [Tyler find a fly-ridden heap of dirty diapers on a table in the shed] Holy SHIT! Holy Mother of Sarah McLachlan! Nana... what the HELL?

Tyler: Any other crazy bitch-ass fucking people here?

THE VISIT (2015) MOVIE IMAGES

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THE VISIT (2015) STORY SYNOPSIS

Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) say goodbye to their mother as they board a train and head deep into Pennsylvania farm country to meet their maternal grandparents for the first time. Welcomed by Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), all seems well until the siblings start to notice increasingly strange behavior from the seemingly charming couple. Once the children discover a shocking secret, they begin to wonder if they'll ever make it home.

THE VISIT (2015) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 23 September 2015
Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐½

M.Night Shyamalan is one of the most divisive film-makers of the last twenty years. His films have ranged from excellent to appalling. He has gone from wunderkind auteur to Director-for-hire. His last film - AFTER EARTH - was maligned but not as bad as many critics made it out to be. It's extremely pleasing to see them that his new film, THE VISIT, is closer to the work through which Shyamalan established his name with films like The SIXTH SENSE, UNBREAKABLE and SIGNS.

THE VISIT is not so much a found footage film as it is a an amateur documentary movie, or so Shyamalan would have the viewer believe. The script, also written by Shyamalan deliberately sets up teenager Rebecca Jamison (Olivia DeJonge) as an aspiring High School film-maker who is using a first-time visit to her estranged Grandparents to help her mother (Kathryn Hahn) heal a long-standing rift with her parents. Her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) is also along for "The Visit", bringing a levity to proceedings with his verging-on-puberty enthusiasm Gangsta Rapper routine. There's a deliberate clumsiness on Shyamalan's part to make his film look like an amateur production, but unlike so many "Found Footage" horror thrillers, his skill and experience come to the fore as he keeps the camera fixed and captures events in a much more traditional cinematic fashion. Many films in this popular film-making style attempt to use the camera perspective as one of the character's views, but the reason why THE VISIT succeeds is that Shyamalan doesn't try and replace a character's perspective by way of the camera lense. His characters use the camera as a tool and operate independently of it by creating fixed locations for camera set-ups and then moving in and out of the frame. It's really well executed and helps to keep the viewer captive to the story and not question the film-making technique.

While technique is important, without an engrossing story THE VISIT could have become a by-the-numbers thriller, but it is more than that. THE VISIT is quite a simple - yet affecting - story. Rebecca and Tyler are desperate to give their Mum some time off, so they have committed to spending the week with their Grandparents, whom they have never met. Despite their Mum’s misgivings (based on her own history with her parents), the pair travel by train and are warmly greeted by Pop-Pop and Nana. As an aspiring young film-maker, Rebecca is determined to capture every waking moment of their trip in search of the “Elixir”, a euphemism she has coined for the special moment that she hopes to capture on film that will convince her Mum that her parents have forgiven the traumas of the past. Tyler, being just that little bit younger, doesn’t quite understand what his sister is searching for but he is happy to play his part as something of the film’s comic relief. Events soon take a turn for the unusual when Pop-Pop tells the kids they need to be in bed by 9:30 pm and they should keep the door locked until the morning. Curiosity gets the better of Rebecca and, while investigating noises in the downstairs section of the house, she sees Nana projectile vomiting while in some kind of fugue state. It proves too much for her as she dashes back to the bedroom at top speed and slams the door shut. And so, as the film unfolds the actions of Nana and Pop-Pop become increasingly bizarre as Rebecca and Tyler’s discomfort grows with each passing day.

THE VISIT succeeds in the dramatic stakes, with the four principal cast members delivering performances that strike a balance between accepting people for who they are and asking the hard question when someone’s behaviour becomes completely unacceptable. DeJonge and Oxenbould are great, but it's their kooky grandparents who really make THE VISIT a success. Peter McRobbie as Pop-Pop tries to remain stoic in the face of his wife’s increasingly bizarre behaviour, but it becomes apparent to Rebecca and Tyler that his own battles with old age are taking a psychological toll on the old man. It’s Deanna Dunagan’s Nana who really steals the show. Right from the first night the kids are in residence her behaviour comes into question and there are moments throughout the film where Shyamalan uses the trope of the “scary old lady” to maximum effect. Throughout the film, the viewer is pushed and prodded into uncomfortable thoughts about what manner of harm the old woman may be capable of inflicting upon Rebecca and Tyler. This is the great success of THE VISIT. It’s clear that the kids have been inadvertently placed in danger and the viewers care what’s going to happen to them as their mother comes to realise that she has made a terrible mistake by allowing her kids to visit her childhood home.

THE VISIT has definitely provided Shyamalan with an opportunity revisit the things that made him one of the most popular film-makers in the first part of the 21st Century. Somewhere between THE LADY IN THE WATER and THE HAPPENING, things got a little murky and films like THE LAST AIRBENDER AND AFTER EARTH were roundly criticised and failed to make significant box office impact. THE VISIT is a stripped-down, bare bones film that achieves great impact by taking something as simple as a visit to your Grandparents and turns the weird-factor up to maximum volume. It’s a great return to form, now all that needs to be done is convince movie-goers that THE VISIT is more SIXTH SENSE than AIRBENDER!