The new film The Visit is a new horror flick from M. Night Shyamalan who made three good to great movies (6th Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable) and then proceeded to make a series of bad to terrible movies (The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth). His output kept getting worse that I went to each hoping that maybe he was on his way back… but if he wasn’t, at least he makes unintentionally funny terrible movies. And, if you’ll recall, his earlier films all had a twist ending – and here’s the twist for The Visit… it’s a good film!
I’m shocked to say it, but Shyamalan has finally gotten his mojo back and made a good creepy, fun, and funny little low budget horror flick. The premise is that a couple of kids are going to visit their estranged grandparents for the first time and the older girl is going to document it for her mom who refuses to see her parents (due to some past traumatic event she won’t talk about). So the girl records everything and, yes, this is a found footage movie that is actually good. It’s also doesn’t give us the usual crappy non-ending that every other found footage film does. So thank Shakira for that.
The Shakira joke above is an inside joke for those who have seen this movie – told because this movie is genuinely funny both in terms of its humor but also in terms that it knows what kind of movie it is. Some of the humor is that we know that some of this creepy stuff happening is creepy, the characters in the movie know its creepy and react realistically and the film makers know the audience knows – and that’s a twisty way of saying I smiled my way through every second of it, even when it’s being creepy. Is it SCARY, probably not – I think it’s having too much fun to really SCARE but it can be unsettling.
I can assure you that the film was working big time on the audience I was in with. Lots of laughs and shouts – for a 1pm showing, that was impressive.
So, yeah, this is a genuinely good and fun time at the movies. If you don’t like horror, I think this movie is still worth seeing. If you have been hoping for Shyamalan to make a good film, well this is it. If you were hoping for another trainwreck, well, you’ll still have fun, just not at his expense.
Score: 88