The Visit (2015)

[Guestx]

There were occasional scenes that worked at times, like the creepy grandma playing hide and seek under the house, but even the scenes that worked were plagued with problems. With the hide and seek, the kids were still filming themselves in unnatural ways, and I think the girl crawled away from the approaching grandma, and once she "got away" she just stopped and stayed under the house (halfway to the exit) and kept filming, and waited for the grandma to catch up and scare her a second time before *actually* trying to escape. Gotta get that footage for the documentary!

I think sometimes you have to make concessions for movies. They are, after all, movies rather than real life, and sometimes things must be done to tell a story that are not entirely realistic.

You mentioned Rocky the other day in our conversation. Is that character really realistic in the way that he comes out of nowhere to almost beat the champion of the world? Not really. But it's a good story anyway.

From the recycled book of M. Night Shyamalan Tricks:
- Thriller / horror
- Directing kids in a horror (hell, he's the guy that directed Hayley Joel Osment to an Oscar nomination)
- Twist ending

But he does these things so well. It's what people to go his movies to see. It's what I personally want from him, because when he does it right, it's such a good experience that no other director is offering.

Do you criticize Hitchcock for never making a Western? Of course not. That's not what he does.

Tacked on in a hope to be trendy and relevant:
- Found footage POV filming

Or maybe he just saw that as a way to make an interesting movie on $5 million. After all, that's why Blair Witch used that tactic. It was a creative way around budget limitations.

It really seemed like his sad attempt to recapture the Sixth Sense. Just with one extra kid and a different twist. Packaged in a bunch of trendy stuff.

Will you enlighten me on how The Visit is ANYTHING like The Sixth Sense? Because I'm failing to see the similarities.

 

[Guestx]

Get a rope.

Best I can do for you is consider switching Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense. TSS is also a little overrated. That doesn't mean it's not a good film, it just means it's not everything some people make it out to be.

But The Village and Signs are locked.

 

[Razor]

This movie was retardedly funny

 

[BisexualMMA]

I think sometimes you have to make concessions for movies. They are, after all, movies rather than real life, and sometimes things must be done to tell a story that are not entirely realistic.

You mentioned Rocky the other day in our conversation. Is that character really realistic in the way that he comes out of nowhere to almost beat the champion of the world? Not really. But it's a good story anyway

The plot of having a ham and egger get a title shot was outlandish. Rocky's behavior while within that plot was realistic. There's a difference. He behaved realistically within the confines of the plot.

The kids in The Visit didn't.

Rocky was Oscar nominated for best screenplay and best actor. Ain't nobody nominating Vanilla Ice Jr. for stopping to point the camera at his own face when he should be running for his life.

But he does these things so well. It's what people to go his movies to see. It's what I personally want from him, because when he does it right, it's such a good experience that no other director is offering.

Do you criticize Hitchcock for never making a Western? Of course not. That's not what he does

What I would criticize Hitchcock for is if he suddenly remade something similar to The Birds or Psycho as a found footage POV film if he were alive today.

Or maybe he just saw that as a way to make an interesting movie on $5 million. After all, that's why Blair Witch used that tactic. It was a creative way around budget limitations.

It was creative when Blair Witch did it almost 20 years ago. There is absolutely nothing creative about found footage POV horrors in 2015.

I would go as far as to day that It is decidedly uncreative.

Will you enlighten me on how The Visit is ANYTHING like The Sixth Sense? Because I'm failing to see the similarities.

The basic skeleton is Kid(s) being repeatedly scared in a frightful setting / scenario. At the end, that scenario is revealed to be something other than what you thought it was.

At its core, this is the spine of both movies.

Needless to say, they were fleshed out in substantially different manners, and with disparate levels of quality.

But make no mistake, M. Night approached writing The Visit from that starting skeleton. He had just already used up his best ideas for fleshing it out in first handful of films.

 

[Guestx]

What I would criticize Hitchcock for is if he suddenly remade something similar to The Birds or Psycho as a found footage POV film if he were alive today.

But no, wait. . . You were criticizing him for:

- making a thriller/horror film
- directing kids
- having a twist ending

Hitchcock also made a career out of making genre stories with similar ideas and themes. Or, let's jump mediums: We recently talked about Agatha Christie. Lots of similarities from one book to the next. Always a mystery. Always featuring upper class British characters. But that's what people wanted from her. You don't go to Agatha Christie for a comedy or sci-fi story. You go for a British mystery.

Personally, I want MORE stories like those early days of M. Night, not fewer.

It was creative when Blair Witch did it almost 20 years ago. There is absolutely nothing creative about found footage POV horrors in 2015.

I would go as far as to day that It is decidedly uncreative.

But it's still a way to do something interesting on a small budget.

And besides, found footage is just a tool or technique now that can be used to tell a wide variety of stories. It itself is not creative, but you can do creative things with it. Or to put it another way: To say that there's nothing creative about found footage is like saying there's nothing creative about action movies with guns.

The basic skeleton is Kid(s) being repeatedly scared in a frightful setting / scenario. At the end, that scenario is revealed to be something other than what you thought it was.

At its core, this is the spine of both movies.

Needless to say, they were fleshed out in substantially different manners, and with disparate levels of quality.

But make no mistake, M. Night approached writing The Visit from that starting skeleton. He had just already used up his best ideas for fleshing it out in first handful of films.

All right, there are some similarities in that sense. But never once has the thought even crossed my mind that The Sixth Sense and The Visit are ANYTHING alike.

 

[BisexualMMA]

But no, wait. . . You were criticizing him for:

- making a thriller/horror film
- directing kids
- having a twist ending

Hitchcock also made a career out of making genre stories with similar ideas and themes. Or, let's jump mediums: We recently talked about Agatha Christie. Lots of similarities from one book to the next. Always a mystery. Always featuring upper class British characters. But that's what people wanted from her. You don't go to Agatha Christie for a comedy or sci-fi story. You go for a British mystery.

Personally, I want MORE stories like those early days of M. Night, not fewer.

Similar ideas and themes is fine. Becoming something close to a self-parody is a little depressing.

I'm not advocating against Shyamalan making more horrors. But if he's going to keep going back to that well, hopefully he will wait until he has a creative idea and a reason to make the movie. I can't think of anything lazier than just taking the "kids with a twist" notion and grafting "kid filmmaker POV" on top of it.

But it's still a way to do something interesting on a small budget.

And besides, found footage is just a tool or technique now that can be used to tell a wide variety of stories. It itself is not creative, but you can do creative things with it. Or to put it another way: To say that there's nothing creative about found footage is like saying there's nothing creative about action movies with guns.

It's a tool that is the equivalent of a dead horse beaten into liquefied mush. Nothing says "half assed" to me more than a feature length found footage horror film. They're churned out like pornos.

If you are a director of Shyamalan's stature, full length found footage POV is where you go when you have exhausted your other possibilities. I don't think even John Carpenter or Renny Harlin has resorted to it.

The only thing worse that I can think of is George Romero with his POV zombie movie Diary of the Dead. And even that was in 2007, when found footage wasn't the tired cliche that it has now become.

 

[Guestx]

It's a tool that is the equivalent of a dead horse beaten into liquefied mush. Nothing says "half assed" to me more than a feature length found footage horror film. They're churned out like pornos.

If you want to see found footage used to tell a story that I think was really interesting and entertaining, go watch Chronicle. It's a good movie.

If you are a director of Shyamalan's stature, full length found footage POV is where you go when you have exhausted your other possibilities.

Again, I'll mention the budget restrictions. But more than than that, have you considered that Shyamalan may have just though that the technique was interesting and jthat it could be fun to see what he could do with it?

 

[BisexualMMA]

Again, I'll mention the budget restrictions. But more than than that, have you considered that Shyamalan may have just though that the technique was interesting and that it could be fun to see what he could do with it?

Only Shyamalan knows, but I don't think that was the case. Like I said, it felt to me like desperation.

 

[Guestx]

Only Shyamalan knows, but I don't think that was the case. Like I said, it felt to me like desperation.

I know you've said that several times now, and each time I've wondered why. WHY does it feel like desperation? From some other things you've said, it sounds like you think of found footage itself, by its very nature, as a desperation move. As in, the fact that he made a found footage movie at all is itself desperate.

 

[Pixelated Porn]

You mentioned Rocky the other day in our conversation. Is that character really realistic in the way .

black guy beating white guy in boxing??? ain't buying it. suspension of disbelief can only go so far anyone will tell you that---even hillary supporters

 

[BisexualMMA]

I know you've said that several times now, and each time I've wondered why. WHY does it feel like desperation? From some other things you've said, it sounds like you think of found footage itself, by its very nature, as a desperation move. As in, the fact that he made a found footage movie at all is itself desperate.

Can you imagine Spielberg making one just because he was curious what he could do with the genre?

If he ever does, I will eat my words.

Do you think it's an accident that M. Night Shyamalan went that route when at the bottom of the abyss career-wise, post-Airbender and After Earth, and having trouble getting his projects funded? Do you think he WANTED to fund the movie himself and take the risk? He was out of options. So back to horror to play it safe, and POV so he could afford to make it. Now write a script that fits those constraints and get this thing done before people forget who is altogether. It actually felt like a first draft to me.

It wasn't just resorting to found footage. The whole project felt creatively bankrupt to me, like he was out of ideas. Especially out of ideas for dialogue and character building. You shouldn't be perpetually annoyed and groaning at the things the writer uses to sketch the protagonists. M. Night wasn't sold on these two characters (the kids) and as a result neither was I. He just threw two nondescript kid characters in there, dressed one up as "filmmaker with camera words" and the other as "rapper that uses pop star names as swears" and said "Action."

Can you recall the "strange surface quirks" that Hayley Joel Osment had in The Sixth Sense, or the son in Unbreakable? You can't because they didn't have those quirks. Shyamalan didn't need to write in those superficial crutches because the characters were real kids with real struggles. Shyamalan believed in the core of those characters, and as a result, so did I.

If he had created something real with the kids in The Visit, he wouldn't have felt the need to hide them behind rapping and pop star swears and "focal length of the lens" and so on.

By the time he was making The Visit, Shyamalan had become so insecure that he was taking these quirks that defined minor characters like "work out one side of the body guy" in Lady in the Water, and using them to define his main characters.

 

[Guestx]

Can you imagine Spielberg making one just because he was curious what he could do with the genre?

No, but Spielberg is in a very different place in his career.

Do you think it's an accident that M. Night Shyamalan went that route when at the bottom of the abyss career-wise, post-Airbender and After Earth, and having trouble getting his projects funded? Do you think he WANTED to fund the movie himself and take the risk? He was out of options. So back to horror to play it safe, and POV so he could afford to make it.

First off, I'm a bit unclear on the financing. I've heard that Shyamalan financed the movie himself, but I've also heard that Blumhouse had a hand in a financing and that's why there was a $5 million budget--because Blumhouse has a hard budgetary cap of $5 million that they will not go over.

With that said, I agree that he didn't have a lot of options. No one was giving him $100 million to make a movie anymore.

Does that mean that The Visit was a desperation move though? Or does it mean that he tried to do the best he could with what he had to work with? What's the alternative, to just not make a movie at all? Find another career? Wait until studios just decide to give you a huge budget again?

What would be a way to make a movie on $5 million that is NOT a "desperation move," by your definition of the term?

It wasn't just resorting to found footage. The whole project felt creatively bankrupt to me, like he was out of ideas. Especially out of ideas for dialogue and character building. You shouldn't be perpetually annoyed and groaning at the things the writer uses to sketch the protagonists. M. Night wasn't sold on these two characters (the kids) and as a result neither was I. He just threw two nondescript kid characters in there, dressed one up as "filmmaker with camera words" and the other as "rapper that uses pop star names as swears" and said "Action."

Can you recall the "strange surface quirks" that Hayley Joel Osment had in The Sixth Sense, or the son in Unbreakable? You can't because they didn't have those quirks. Shyamalan didn't need to write in those superficial crutches because the characters were real kids with real struggles. Shyamalan believed in the core of those characters, and as a result, so did I.

If he had created something real with the kids in The Visit, he wouldn't have felt the need to hide them behind rapping and pop star swears and "focal length of the lens" and so on.

We'll agree to disagree. Like I said, I believed the kids and I liked them.

If you want to hear M. Night himself talk about the film and his motivations behind it, I would direct you to this episode of The Q&A, an AWESOME movie podcast where the host gets to interview a huge range of writers, directors and occasionally actors:

http://www.theqandapodcast.com/2015/09/m-night-shyamalan-visit-q.html

 

[BisexualMMA]

No, but Spielberg is in a very different place in his career.

i.e. Not Desperate.

Does that mean that The Visit was a desperation move though? Or does it mean that he tried to do the best he could with what he had to work with? What's the alternative, to just not make a movie at all? Find another career? Wait until studios just decide to give you a huge budget again?

What would be a way to make a movie on $5 million that is NOT a "desperation move," by your definition of the term?

Make a contained drama from an indie spec script with good characters and dialogue.

Make a documentary.

Wait until he had an idea and characters that he believed in. I'm pretty sure he's not starving.

If he actually did believe in The Visit, rewrite it until the characters had more depth than the surface crutches I described.

 

[Guestx]

If he actually did believe in The Visit, rewrite it until the characters had more depth than the surface crutches I described.

I'd really like for you to listen to that podcast and get your perspective. I will probably re-listen to today myself.

 

[Big L]

The Village
Signs
The Sixth Sense
Unbreakable

In that order.

Get a rope.

For me its....

Signs
The Sixth Sense
Unbreakable
The Village
Devil
The Happening

The Village could have been higher but gods honest truth, my wife and I sat down to watch it and in the first 10 minutes I called the twist. It sort of took the punch out of it for me.

 

[Guestx]

For me its....

Signs
The Sixth Sense
Unbreakable
The Village
Devil
The Happening

The Village could have been higher but gods honest truth, my wife and I sat down to watch it and in the first 10 minutes I called the twist. It sort of took the punch out of it for me.

Devil's not really Shyamalan's. He came up with the story and he produced it, but the screenplay was written by another guy and it was directed by John Dowdle.

 

[BisexualMMA]

I'd really like for you to listen to that podcast and get your perspective. I will probably re-listen to today myself.

I'll bookmark it.

 

[GordoBarraBJJ]

I watched about 3/4 of it last fall. Have not ever finished watching it. It was not complete garbage from the portion I watched. However, just have no desire to finish watching it.

 

[Polish Machine]

I watched about 3/4 of it last fall. Have not ever finished watching it. It was not complete garbage from the portion I watched. However, just have no desire to finish watching it.

The end has a scene that made the move a 2/10 instead a 1/10.

Spoiler

That little annoying retarded kid gets old man shit smeared in his face.

 

[BisexualMMA]

The end has a scene that made the move a 2/10 instead a 1/10.

Spoiler

That little annoying retarded kid gets old man shit smeared in his face.

That has been universally regarded as everyone's favorite scene in this thread!

Mine too.