“The Visit” may be contender for weirdest, worst film of year
– FILM REVIEW – By Cate Marquis –
Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, “The Visit” may top the list for the weirdest film this year, and possibly the worst as well. While it seems to be going for scary, the audience laughed through most of the “scary” parts – it just is not clear if that is what Shyamalan intended or not.
Shyamalan, who many would say has had a checkered career as a filmmaker, produced, wrote and directed “The Visit.” So it is pretty much his film. The premise of this tale is simple – and in many respects, familiar in the horror film genre. Two teens, 13-year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) and his older sister Becca (Olivia DeJonge) go off to spend a week with grandparents they have never met – but without their divorced single-parent mom (Kathyrn Hahn), the grandparents’ estranged daughter, who is not going along. No, she is going on a cruise with her boyfriend. Once the kids are alone on the isolated old farm with grandparents Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), strange things begin to happen.
“The Visit” is packed with horror film conventions straight out of 1970s drive-in fare and other tidbits from the scary movie tradition, all delivered with a straight face and no hint of winking. The kids are actually pretty likeable and there are some comic-relief moments early on, which helps draw us in to the film despite the far-fetched premise. Becca is a would-be filmmaker, who sees this visit as a chance to make a documentary about her family and the visit. Her younger brother Tyler, played with a lot of goofy charm by Ed Oxenbould, helps on the film but what he really wants is to be a rapper. The story is largely presented through the daughter’s film footage (yup), starting with an interview with Mom before they leave – which is one way to explain the set-up.
On camera, Mom talks about how she has not seen or spoken to her parents for years, after running off with the kids’ father – who later left his family for a younger woman. She explains that the day she left, they had a big fight and some awful event happened, but Mom won’t tell them what – the first of many mysteries to solve. Yet after her parents contact their long-estranged daughter over the internet, Mom suddenly agrees to let them see the granddaughter and grandson they had never met. With a week-long visit – alone – at their remote farm in rural Pennsylvania. While she takes a cruise. What could go wrong?
Most of the footage is the girl’s movie but every sequence begins with large blood red letters filling the screen and noting the day and time – Monday morning – and so forth, evoking “The Shining.” The grandparents seem sweet and kindly, feeding them constantly, offering cookies and doing everything to make the kids comfortable and make their stay fun. Of course, we are not surprised to find out what is really scary on this isolated, large, brooding, wind-swept farm. It is the grandparents, who are….OLD! Eeeewww!
Yeah. Not kidding.
Following the usual scary movie convention, it builds suspense around the creepiness of the location, with plenty of places to hide and Gothic atmosphere. The film is rated PG-13 so there are not buckets-o-blood, but there are scary situations, violence and some nudity – by old people.
The farm is Gothic perfect – a stone mansion surrounded by run-down barns and outbuildings, fields filled with blowing snow, a lonely swing hanging from a bare tree, an abandoned old well. There is many familiar scary movie bits and even some references to classic fairy tales, but every time one of these scary scenes reached its peak, waves of giggles, not squeals of fear, rippled through the theater.
Scary sequences include one about a ramshackle shed to which Grandpa sometimes sneaks off. The boy asks what’s in the shed and gets the expected, “nothing but don’t go in there” response – which means he immediately sneaks in. And discovers it has a chilling secret – soiled Depends.
What really stinks is this film.
Even if Shyamalan intended this film to be funny, which is entirely possible, one should think about what he is asking us to laugh at: old people whose bodies are not as perfect as they once were, incontinence, dementia, walking slow, forgetfulness, not understanding modern technology. Awful stuff like that – or as others would see it, human stuff like that. Although the film does give us a justification for what happens in the end, that bit of plot does not excuse the whole subtext of this weird, unsettling, repulsive film. The real creepiness is what he director is saying about people in this film, and that seems to be that old people are creepy – even if he is kind of joking when he says it. So who are the real monsters – the ones on screen or the one behind the camera? Since this project is all Shyamalan, there is no one else to blame. Maybe when he gets old, his kids will watch this and remember how scary old people are – and lock him up quick. Or maybe just take away his licence to make films like this.
© Cate Marquis
