The Visit - Movie Review

The Visit Review

 

The Visit is the latest movie from M. Night Shyamalan. Now, if The Visit was a horror/comedy like Scary movie, I would give it a 10/10. But... it's not.

The Visit is a fairly simplistic movie about these kids visiting their creepy grandparents for the first time in Pennsylvania. I had a great time with this movie, don't get me wrong. But that is an entirely different story from being well made. The Visit, with its advertisements plastered all over Google and YouTube, is entirely marketed as a horror movie. For an hour and 45 minute movie, I was only truly scared about 5. If I'm being modest. And that was only towards the end of the movie. The other 100 minutes are utterly hilarious.

This movie is absurd, but it works. I'm never really a fan of the whole 'found footage' shebang, but it makes more sense in this movie than other movies. The entire time I was watching this movie, I couldn't stop thinking about the tonal confliction. There were funny parts where I wasn't sure if I was meant to be scared or not. It's like going to a restaurant and ordering a medium rare steak, but getting a medium steak. I mean, it could very well taste good but it's not what you ordered. This movie was probably made with a razor thin budget, so it is going to make a few bucks no matter what. The entire cast mainly consists of two child actors and two elder actors, which is a ballsy move for any movie. I didn't have too many problems with them, they all did their part and convinced me of their role.

However, the 13 year old boy actor further enhanced the tonal confliction in this movie all the time. In a creepy moment, he would often drop a one-liner and ruin the moment by making it sort of funny. I can tell that the boy is meant to be used as comic relief, but there are way too many times he 'relieves' the audience. The movie isn't scary enough for him to be adding all these funny comments anyway. The 15 year old girl actress sounded like Thelma from Scooby Doo, or the annoying girl from The Magic School Bus who's tagline is "According to my research...". Whenever she talked she sounded like a know it all, which did get annoying by the end of the movie. I will give credit to the climax of the movie, the only part that was genuinely creepy. There was even a plot twist that I was so not expecting. Mainly due to the fact that the movie had already from the start lowered the bar in terms of plot development.

Overall, I did have a blast with this movie. I also had a good time watching Robocroc and Sharktopus 2. To sum it up, The Visit did display the characters thoughts and feelings well, It just didn't give the audience the emotions they were probably intended to feel.

+ Hilarious!                                  - Tonal confliction

+ Good plot twist/climax             - Plot needed to pick up pace

+ Realistic premise is creepy

6.9/10