The Visit (2015)

Sigh...

What a sad, sad, miserable piece of shit.

So this was the heralded return of M. Night Shyamalan to his thriller twist roots...

I can say with no reservations that of all the Shyamalan films, this is the one I would least want to watch again. I would actually rather re-watch The Last Airbender or After Earth than ever sit through The Visit a second time. And that is saying a lot. Because I utterly despise those two films.

This was M. Night Shyamalan's Desperation: The Movie. It was the film equivalent of a recently divorced housewife crying her way through an intro video for a dating site.

M. Night does "found footage." If I hadn't known this was Shyamalan, I would have 100% believed you if you told me it was from the makers of any of the Paranormal Activity films.

The dialogue made up one of the worst scripts I have seen played out in recent memory. Boy = white rapper. Girl = avid filmmaker. Boy's lines = pop culture references. Girl's lines = filmmaking jargon.

M. Night has resorted to found footage and pop culture references. What a miserable experience. It felt like he was uneasy, nervous and shaken putting this whole thing together.

Characters were hanging onto their cameras and filming everything long past the point where they would have dropped their cameras and shit their pants. The bloody villains started picking up the cameras and filming things.

Shyamalan had no idea what he was even going for. That whole message in the end about forgiveness with the Mom's confessional about how she left her parents? Who cares? That had nothing to do with the actual movie we just watched. Why is it the entire denouement?

Kid rapping through the end credits... Yay, one last visit to that great rapping thing that we all loved throughout the whole movie, that rapping that really invested me in that kid's character, that I hoped I would get to see one last time.

As terrible as After Earth and Airbender were, at least if I ever had to sit through them again, they are visually interesting. This was a script on par with or even worse than those, and it looked terrible.

People had some good things to say about this movie so I was rooting for Shyamalan here and wanted to like this.

So much worse than I was expecting.

3 / 10.

Come at me, M. Night Juggalos.

 

M. Night Juggalos!

 

It was pretty bad. A 3 is actually generous. I didn't even bother to see those other 2 you mentioned though.

 

I really liked it. I read that he edited it over and over because one time it came off as a comedy and then he went too far the other way and he felt he was able to finally balance it. I thought it did a great job of creating tension through silence, I really enjoy that.

That being said it isn't as good as Signs or Unbreakable but it was WAY better than Lady In The Water, I fucking hated that movie.

 

I liked it

 

I stand with those that liked it.

It wasn't on the level of Sixth Sense/Unbreakable/Signs/The Village, but it felt fresh to me and it was certainly his best movie in many years. I found the kids likable and I thought he did some interesting things on a relatively tiny budget.

One review that's always stuck out to me was Scott Mendelson's Forbes review, especially this part:

While I am not that effusive in my praise of the film, I understand his enthusiasm. It was good to see M. Night come back and make something really interesting. There was a joy in that.

I gave the movie a 7/10 and thought that more than anything it was a step in the right direction.

 

@shadow_priest_x

Re: Forbes' Review...

What was the surprising decency, and where was the wit that sparkled? I welcome any examples of either.

If I recall correctly, the first few minutes of the movie were a reality TV style confessional of the mother talking about her past. That sure didn't erase the Last Airbender for me. I think the next few minutes were the boy rapping and the girl talking about her documentary plans. Even if he liked the movie, I don't know what he found so enthralling about the opening.

 

Like I said, I don't necessarily agree with everything he said, but I did think the movie had a strong human core, largely due to the performances of the kids. I do think the rapping was a bit annoying, but I still liked that kid overall and I believed in their performances. They were real to me and their relationship to each other was real to me.

You also have to consider some of the themes that are explored. It subtly discusses with the audience the issue of aging and touches on the fears that I think many of us have: Becoming old means breaking down as a human being. It means not being able to control our bodies or our minds and slowly deteriorating until there's nothing left of us (not on this earth, at least). That's some terrifying shit and I thought M. Night did a good job of layering this sub-text in without making it "the movie."

 

I thought it was ok. When they ended up under the house was really creepy. That old lady seemed deranged.

 

I thought it was ok, the boy was obnoxious and some of the more serious scenes were laughable, I was entertained though.

 

That's probably the most memorable scene.

 

For me, it had it's moments. But like you said, this found footage thing was annoying as fuck ! The kids were annoying... and the plot was pretty obvious from the begining. But imo Pop pop and Nana saved it from being a total disaster.
I'd give it 4.5/10.

 

It felt that way to me, which was why I said in the OP that Shyamalan didn't know what he was going for. It felt like he had missed the mark to some degree in filming and was handicapped by that in editing - thus the abrupt shifts in tone, the tacked on sentimental ending, etc.

 

I think opinions on the kids' performances will probably be a big determinant in enjoyment of the movie, and probably a divisive topic.

They weren't Deadly Prey bad, but I wasn't terribly impressed.

 

It was ok. I think it was better than I had imagined. It was fun to watch. The boy pissed me off though.

 

Yeah, if you don't like the kids, you're not going to like the movie. I liked the sister more than the brother--I liked her quite a bit, actually--but both were okay to me and I had no issues with them on an acting level. In fact, it's kind of weird to me that you're mentioning acting because I remember thinking they were both very natural.

 

I would call them...adequate.

They were severely handicapped by the dialogue they were given.

But when they weren't constrained by bad lines, they were still hit or miss.

The girl had some breakdown near the end about how her family separated, and they had her off camera for it. I'm pretty sure they showed the grandma listening and reacting the whole time because the girl's performance didn't look good. It sounded fake, anyway.

The boy... Well, he wasn't complete shit, given the script. Carrying a whole movie like this is a big demand for a grown up actor, let alone a kid. He was okay. I think Shyamalan auditioned kids for his role based more on freestyle rapping than anything though.

It didn't help that they had to constantly do shit that people don't do, like put cameras up to their own faces while paralyzed by terror.

They were good enough to not read false too often. They weren't good enough to be interesting for that length of time (to me).

 

Indeed. Just as an FYI, both of them had been in other shit.

Before The Visit Ed Oxenbould had just starred that movie Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day with Steve Carrell. And Olivia DeJonge was in a somewhat interesting movie called The Sisterhood of Night:

 

it wasnt as good as i was hoping but not bad. Hated the kid rapping and thought using him rapping the events of the movie to end it was a shitty way to send the viewers off. But it had some memorable creepy scenes. The grandparents were really good. Im still a m night shmalyan believer and his next film looks really good.

 

edit the first twenty and last 8 minutes out and it's pretty ok. it definitely is one of those movies where you gotta turn off the ol brain, it's like why didn't the mom just stay on the phone long enough to talk to the parents when they were there. So many missed opportunities is kind of sketch and would raise flags to me. but the old lady was pretty nutso. i agree with TS though on everything else. that kid was annoying and i'm not sure why writers/directors think rapping in a movie ever looks good (outside of an "urban" movie or a movie about rap.).