The Visit (2015) Review

"Would you mind getting inside the oven to clean it?"

-Nana

Becca Jamison (Olivia DeJonge) and her little brother, Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), go to visit their grandparents for the first time.  Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) seem nice, but odd.  As the week-long trip goes on, the behavior of the grandparents just gets stranger.  Becca and Tyler do their best to investigate and uncover their grandparents' dark secret.

If you haven't seen The Visit, stop what you are doing and go watch.  It's not a great movie, but it's still worth watching and I will be spoiling the film below.  You've been warned.

What Works:

I'll have some things to say about the fact that this is a found-footage film below, but I do have to say, this medium gives us some really creepy visuals.  There are some moments that are simply unnerving and the unusual camera angles help with that.  I especially liked the scene where Becca and Tyler run into Nana underneath the house.  It caught me off-guard and it was a great visual.

I also really like that this movie doesn't spell everything out for you.  Going back and thinking about the film, we are never explicitly told what the deal is with the people visiting the house, but it makes a lot more sense by the end of the film.  The Visit doesn't hold you're hand, but leaves you enough information to piece things together, which I appreciate.

Both Dunagan and McRobbie have excellent performances and come off as very unsettling.  They carry the film and do a great job at reassuring the audience that everything is fine before doing something creepy once again.

Finally, the twist was utterly fantastic and I did not see it coming at all.  I love how it was handled and I realized what was happening just seconds before Becca and Tyler learned the truth.  This twist gave the 3rd act a lot of tension and I was genuinely creeped out.

What Sucks:

I really didn't care for the lead kids.  For the first half of the film I found them both to be really obnoxious.  Becca constantly used big words and the dialogue both kids had felt very unnatural.  M. Night Shyamalan wrote the script and I don't think he had a firm grasp on how to write kids.  Most of the time, all I could think was, "Kids don't talk like this."

While the found-footage element did give us some creepy visuals, it did prevent me from being fully engrossed in the film from the get go.  I just didn't buy that these kids would be so proficient with this equipment at a young age.  I also didn't buy that they would be so invested in making a documentary. It pulled me out of the film and I can't help but think it would have been stronger if it wasn't found-footage.

Finally, I found both Becca and Tyler very frustrating in the 3rd act.  Both of them freeze up when they are in mortal danger.  I get that it's part of Tyler' character arc to freeze up and Becca has a problem with looking in mirrors, but come on.  The character development could have been handled in a less frustrating manner.  It also drove me up the wall that Becca went down into the basement when she did.  Just GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!  Do anything else.  Some of these decisions were just too frustrating for me to overlook.

Verdict:

It took me a little bit to get into The Visit because I didn't like the main characters and some of their decisions.  I also don't know if this needed to be a found-footage movie, but the twist was amazing, Dunagan and McRobbie are great, and there are some really creepy visuals.  This is a flawed film, but is worth seeing and has got it going on.

 7/10: Good