The Visit (2015)
Directed by M Night Shyamalan
Twist! Every Shamalamadingdong movie right? It has to have one. I was intrigued by this movie the moment it came out. I never got a chance to watch it until now. So I guess, yeah here we go.
The Visit is about a brother and sister that go and stay with their estranged grandparents they’ve never met in BFE. Their mom (Katheryn Hahn) goes on a cruise with her boyfriend, happy to see she got over Dale Doback finally. The daughter is using a camera to make a documentary about meeting her grandparents. The grandparents do really bizarre things, and it all builds up to a twist at the end.
The acting is really solid in this. The two old people were incredibly creepy and convincing. The kids, played by Ed Oxenbould and Olivia DeJonge were really great as well. Olivia was especially impressive to me, she has a moment where she seems very vulnerable when her brother is interviewing her with their camera. The story itself is very bizarre and hard to figure out initially. Once you see the grandparents are pretty nutty it starts to make more sense. Honestly I didn’t see the twist ending coming, I figured there would be a twist because Shyamalan loves twists but the direction I wasn’t sure on. Man did it make my heart sink.
SPOILER ALERT. The twist in this comes when the daughter, Becca shows her mom her grandparents acting strangely outside via webcam. The mother is shocked and says “those aren’t your grandparents, that’s who’ve you been staying with this whole week?!” The girl reassures those are who they’ve been with. The mom calls the cops. Becca discovers her real grandparents are dead in the basement and the phonies are escaped mental patients. I didn’t see it coming, but I’m HORRIBLE at figuring things out like this haha. Blessing and a curse I swear.
If you want a movie that will get under your skin, but not be super gory or gross then this is one of them. It makes you think and builds up tension slowly with a good pay off at the end. It is somewhat of a throwback in that sense. I really enjoyed watching this and kick myself for waiting so long to see it. I give the Visit a B+.
