284.
The Visit
6.5/10
Finally hitting another horror movie in my heading to the end of my movie alphabet list. Not too many movies left now this movie is grabbing my attention as the horror movies are heading back to the cinemas. M. Night Shyamalan has really been a hit or miss director and writer for me so it'll be interesting to find out whether this movie is just a forgettable as some of the others. What I am looking forward to is the fact that this movie is within the found-footage genre. Again, this genre isn't for everyone but I really like the sub-genre within horror. Interestingly, there seems to be another label added to the movie and that's some comedy. That's the part which is perking my interest. Let's visit the storyline and see how this turns out.
So the movie begins with a daughter interviewing her mother as she and her younger brother prepare to visit their grandparents that they have never met. From what I have seen, this looks like a perspective of the children through the use of their cameras. The first couple of days are fine, with a couple of weird exchanges between family members that haven't met before.
Trying to guess what this movie is going to be about, I was thinking some sort of ritual goes on at night with neighbours, but how wrong was I. The kids start to play hide and seek under the house but things take a strange turn with some strange old woman laughing and all of a sudden the Grandmother is crawling after the Granddaughter like a demented monster. All of a sudden, as the kids scream, the old lady switches to normality and asks if they enjoyed it.
At night, there is constantly scratching noises and although the children have been asked not to come out of their rooms after 9 pm. One night they decide to have a look at the Grandmother is seen scratching a wall, another nights she is scuttling along the floor. Things are definitely pushing the kids to find some answers and with some hidden cameras, they start to see some other strange goings-on. They decide something has to be done when the camera catches their Grandmother walking into their room with a knife. They call their mother through Zoom and beg her to pick them up. The mother sees the old couple outside and instantly calls the police as these are not her parents.
The young girl ends up finding her real Grandparents dead in the basement, hence why that was off-limits. Once the kids try to leave, the 'Grandparents' know that something is going on.
They trap them inside with the use of board games. The end ends with the kids taking over and killing the two perpetrators who ended up being escaped, mental asylum patients. They head outside to sit in the grass and wait for their mother and the police to show. The movie ends with another interview of the mother explaining why she left home and never spoke to her parents again. She always knew it was a mistake and asks her own daughter to not hold resentment against her father for the fact that he left her and her brother.
As I already mentioned, movies coming from this director can be very hit or miss. I knew I was getting a horror but I didn't expect the small comedy aspects. I was very wrong with my guesses on how this story was going to play out and was surprised by how it turned out. Firstly I thought of a ritual cult and then I thought possibly something supernatural but it was actually quite refreshing to have such a 'normal' explanation. By normal I mean something that could happen in real life.
Moving onto the cast, only one face was recognisable and that was the mother. Kathryn Hahn recently played Agatha Harkness on the Wandavision TV show. She isn't in this too much to judge whether her character was just as good. Looking at the youngsters, we have Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould playing the sister and brother duo, who although sometimes don't see eye to eye, gain the confidence to protect each other in the end. Both gave a very good portrayal but I am unsure how much success it brought them in previous years as I haven't personally seen them in anything else. Oxenbould in particular gave an interesting couple of hours acting as a germophobe.
In true M. Night Shyamalan fashion, the twist is the biggest draw about this movie. It's not one you could watch again anytime soon as the surprise element is now lost. It would be interesting to watch it with someone new to the movie, just to see if they can guess what is coming or even their reaction to the reveal. At first, I felt like the movie would contain the horror aspect that I love but with a tiny bit of comedy and answers to each bump in the night, it was a totally different experience by the end.
