#60-E: THE VISIT (2015)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

9.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, once, a while ago (but not when it came out)

BEST SEQUENCE

When Becca gets locked in the bedroom with Nana

BEST LINE

"You have to laugh to keep the deep darkies in a cave"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

68%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"The Visit provides horror fans with a satisfying blend of thrills and laughs -- and also signals a welcome return to form for writer-director M. Night Shyamalan."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Two siblings become increasingly frightened by their grandparents' disturbing behavior while visiting them on vacation."

DIRECTOR

M. Night Shyamalan

MAIN CAST

Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn

THOUGHTS

• It's another found footage movie, full of jump scares, and it works for me. I remember liking it the first time I saw it a few years ago, and I liked it just as much this time, maybe even more than I expected to. There's a smart ramping up of tension throughout, and I forgot how intense the ending gets. As in similar movies, the logic behind the found footage style can be distracting, and even the whole concept strains credulity at times, but it really is a darkly fun little movie, and The Visit doesn't take itself too seriously so I won't either
• Having said all that, 9.5 on the thrill scale feels a tad generous, but I do also think it's scarier than Signs, so here it sits. I would maybe bump Signs down by .5 and give The Visit a 9/10 instead, but I'm not going back to change it; a card laid is a card played, I say
• Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie give two of my favourite performances in an M. Night Shyamalan movie, two extremely well established and accomplished actors having an absolute blast and chewing up the scenery. Incidentally, Deanna Dunagan has won a Tony in the past (for August: Osage County)
• Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould are also pretty good, although they do have to grapple with some of that classic M. Night Shyamalan clunky dialogue (the worst line of the movie is delivered by Becca to Tyler - "I'm telling you it's OK. I downloaded the definition of "Sundowning." You wouldn't understand half the words I'm reading, the word "YOLO" isn't in it.")
• And really, that's about all I have to say about The Visit! A fun little thriller that gets pretty dark and doesn't pull its punches. In fact, there were a few more good sequences worth mentioning that made it hard to choose a best one! Hide-and-seek under the house, Nana walking around puking everywhere, the scratching on the walls and Nana finding the hidden camera, even the climactic Yahtzee game, lots of great moments to choose from!

Up next: Into each life some rain must fall. We've gone through some of the Shyamalan movies that are considered the best; it's time for the worst. Winning (or losing) the readers' poll on Facebook for M. Night Shyamalan's worst film, by a fair margin, it's a movie that I have not seen - The Last Airbender, from 2010