Nordling here.
For many film fans, M. Night Shyamalan has been in director's jail for a few years now. And while THE VISIT doesn't exactly break him out, it does give him something of a parole, if you want to stretch the metaphor even more. THE VISIT very much is a signature film from the SIXTH SENSE director, complete with a twist that many won't see coming (and I freely admit, it blindsided me). Shyamalan knows how to build tension. He's damn good at it - he gives us characters that we enjoy spending time with, balances out the scares with a lot of humor, and he knows how to tighten the vise. He can deliver when he needs to. But THE VISIT is also chockfull of Shyamalan's weaknesses as well - in making sure that everything adds up logically, he loses the forest for the trees, and plot points that work in the heat of the moment crumble at the fingertips upon further examination.
The "found footage" motif, for lack of a better definition, also doesn't do him any favors. For one thing, in some scenes, THE VISIT goes from some fairly elegant camera set-ups to the customary lens chaos of the format, sometimes in a matter of seconds. It's not consistent, and you can feel Shyamalan straining against the boundaries of the conceit. Considering that what we're seeing is coming from a couple of kids operating their cameras, it becomes a struggle between Shyamalan's classical, organic approach, and the necessary limitations that the style brings. At a key point in the film, in fact, the movie could have been even more effective had Shyamalan abandoned the approach altogether. He should have, because THE VISIT, when it works, is thrilling, entertaining, and some of Shyamalan's best work in a long time.
Much of that is because Shyamalan has written some pretty terrific characters this time out. Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are still struggling with the abandonment of their father, and their mother (Kathryn Hahn) is doing her best. Becca and Tyler are resilient, smart kids; there is much love between the children and their mother, and even though Mom's been ostracized from her parents for over 15 years (due to an undetermined event that Mom refuses to talk about), Becca and Tyler are still curious about them. When the kids' grandparents contact their mother, wanting to see the kids for the first time, Becca and Tyler are eager to go - mostly because they want their mother to go on a cruise with her boyfriend and enjoy herself. So Becca and Tyler head out on their own to the small town in Pennsylvania to see their Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) and Nana (Deanna Dunagan) for a week.
Becca has an affinity for cinema, and wants to make a documentary of the trip, while Tyler is younger and interested in hip hop and other things. Still, it becomes very apparent the first night that there is something wrong with both Pop Pop and Nana. Becca insists on shooting all of it with Tyler's help. But as the week unfolds, the kids quickly realize that they may be in danger, especially at night, full of ominous noises and their grandparents' strange and terrifying behavior.
Like THE SIXTH SENSE, Shyamalan sets up THE VISIT in meticulous fashion, and as the audience gathers each bit of information, they may be confident in what's going on. Could Pop Pop and Nana be suffering from elderly dementia, or is something more sinister at work? Shyamalan gives us what we need to know when we need to know it. The kids are also great guides into the film - we like Becca and Tyler and enjoy spending time with them, and DeJonge and Oxenbould give engaging, funny performances. But the more we pay attention, the more the story unravels, and Shyamalan has some difficulty in maintaining the mood at times.
That's largely due to the way the film is shot - there's some wonderful cinematography in THE VISIT that gets undercut by the first person narrative. Shyamalan seems to want to punch through the entire conceit; frankly, at times THE VISIT shouldn't have been a first person film at all. Instead, we're distracted with the familiar, clichéd idea that, at some point, the cameraperson's going to put the camera down and run. It's plagued this genre since the very beginning, and the third act of THE VISIT is full of implausibilities like that. It's too bad - when the audience learns the truth of what's going on it's a tremendously thrilling moment, on par with the reveals of THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE. There are moments in THE VISIT, with Shyamalan using the found footage (and I hate the term as much as you do, believe me) motif, that work perfectly. But the story would have been better served with traditional storytelling, or even, perhaps, a hybrid of the two.
The audience I saw the film with, however, laughed and screamed throughout the movie, and had a great time with it, which is entirely the point - THE VISIT isn't a movie you dissect, it's a movie you ride. In that aspect, barring some petty details, I'd be surprised if THE VISIT didn't have good word-of-mouth. There's an emotional center to THE VISIT that is effective, and Shyamalan hasn't written such sympathetic protagonists since THE SIXTH SENSE. If the characters of Pop Pop and Nana suffer because of that, well, they're supposed to - once their nature is revealed audiences will want to poke holes in everything that was established before. It's only natural. THE VISIT is a flawed movie, but damn if I didn't have fun with it. It's the kind of fun you may feel guilty about later, having bought into the premise, but you won't feel that guilty - you're supposed to scream at a rollercoaster after all, and you're also supposed to say, when you get off, "That wasn't THAT scary." As a ride, THE VISIT does exactly as M. Night Shyamalan intended. If this gets him back on the road to being the filmmaker we fell in love with in 1999, so much the better.
Nordling, out.
