The Visit (2015)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
A brother and sister are sent to their grandparents' remote Pennsylvania farm for a week, where they discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing.
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41 films that influenced The Visit
What critics say influenced The Visit
The decision to frame the whole thing as found-footage, however, is a fundamental flaw; not only is it a tired concept (the pinnacle of the sub-genre, The Blair Witch Project , was released in the same year as The Sixth Sense ) but it also fatally constricts both the narrative and the action.
Her handheld footage (thankfully, not all of the shaky-cam variety) is one of the director’s many nods to genre classics from “The Blair Witch Project” to “The Exorcist” to “Paranormal Activity.”
This might disappoint some cynical viewers who were first introduced to the gimmick when “The Blair Witch Project” popularized it in nauseating fashion back in 1999.
Yet here's writer-director M. Night Shyamalan — whose last in a string of flops, incidentally, was the theater-clearing After Earth, starring Jaden and dad Will Smith — pinning his comeback on a film utilizing a gimmick that already began wearing out its welcome soon after 1999's The Blair Witch Project made it all the rage.
Since The Blair Witch Project’s massive success in 1999, the found footage conceit has often worked well: it instills creepy realism while also cleverly turning the restrictions of low-budget filmmaking into a plot device.
Her handheld footage (thankfully, not all of the shaky-cam variety) is one of the director’s many nods to genre classics from “The Blair Witch Project” to “The Exorcist” to “Paranormal Activity.”
But again, maybe your mileage will vary: At my advanced screening, many in the theater reacted with the same measure of hysteria as those who caught The Exorcist during its first shows back in 1973 or Psycho when it premiered in 1960.
Nana's got some tricks straight out of "The Exorcist," and Pop Pop's doing something fishy in the shed, and out at the well, and in the barn.
Like Devil, which was essentially a modern riff on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the core of The Visit is rooted in a well-worn cultural narrative, in this case the old Grand Guignol tale of the visitor to the insane asylum who gradually comes to realize that the patients have taken over the asylum and are posing as doctors and nurses (there are, of course, bits and pieces of other familiar narratives in there, as well, particularly fairy tales like “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” although here Grandma and the Wolf and the Old Witch are all one in the same).
She might even feel like she’s stumbled into her own personal version of Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies (unfortunately she makes no references to any real documentaries or documentary filmmakers).
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She has a creepy resemblance to Lillian Gish, an actor most famous for her silent cinema performances in D.W. Griffith films like Broken Blossoms and Birth of a Nation.
It’s a middle-aged white guy’s interpretation of modern teenagers, and it feels as disconnected from reality as 1957’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf .
Sharing the same bloodline as 1988's craftily fiendish thriller " Grandmother's House " and 1989's tasty horror-comedy "Parents" while arguably besting them both, "The Visit" preys upon the trepidations of viewers in regard to mortality and the often unpleasant process of aging.
Her handheld footage (thankfully, not all of the shaky-cam variety) is one of the director’s many nods to genre classics from “The Blair Witch Project” to “The Exorcist” to “Paranormal Activity.”
His next film is set to be another collaboration with Jason Blum, the low-budget horror producer behind Insidious and the Paranormal Activity films, and while people will certainly have higher expectations his next time out, I hope we see more of this weirder, care-free Shyamalan.
Later, a camera is planted in a more conspiratorial manner, ala "Paranormal Activity," in an attempt to chronicle late-night weirdness.
Despite the credits boasting the name Jason Blum, the king of “Paranormal Activity” and ilk, “The Visit” isn’t technically found footage.
It's a clever refurbishing of the played-out "found footage" genre, and also a pocket guide to horror-flick history, reaching back to the Brothers Grimm and moving up through Halloween and The Blair Witch Project (and of course the Paranormal Activity films).
For example, it’s hard to go along with the Paranormal Activity-like “handheld footage” approach, particularly in the later stages.
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But again, maybe your mileage will vary: At my advanced screening, many in the theater reacted with the same measure of hysteria as those who caught The Exorcist during its first shows back in 1973 or Psycho when it premiered in 1960.
It’s all over-explained, more like the deflating coda to Hitchcock’s “Psycho” or the “Yeah, and?” “surprise” of “The Village” than the gotcha of “Sixth Sense.”
Two movies have accomplished this masterfully, Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust" and the aforementioned "Blair Witch Project."