Movie Review: M. Night Shyamalan's "The Visit"

By STEPHEN SILVER (Patch Staff)

The Visit is no instant classic and stands almost no chance of going down as one of this fall’s more memorable movies. It’s also director M. Night Shyamalan’s best film in years.

It’s been quite a downward spiral for the Philadelphia region’s onetime cinematic prodigy, whose last decade was a series of one ambitious, high-profile misfire after another. The Visit works because it keeps its small and simple, with a low budget, minimal special effects and a lack of name actors. Rather than aiming high and missing disastrously, M. Night aims much lower and (mostly) succeeds.

The setup: Teenagers Rebecca and Tyler (Olivia De Jonge and Ed Oxenbould) are sent by their single mom (Kathryn Hahn) to spend a week at the rural Pennsylvania home of their grandparents, from whom their mom is estranged and they’ve never met. The daughter, meanwhile, is an aspiring filmmaker who’s constantly filming, in order to foist a found-footage conceit on the proceedings.

The grandparents (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) are weird, creepy and possibly suffering from Alzheimers and/or dementia. Things get weird, and then they get scary, and yes, there is another of those patented Shyamalan third-act twists.

The best thing about The Visit is that it perfectly threads the line between horror and comedy. While some of the scares are legit, this is a film that knows how campy it is and doesn’t hesitate to be funny. I know this film drew more laughs out of the audience I saw it with than most comedies have this year.

The casting is pretty fantastic too. McRobbie is a longtime character actor and Dunagan a stage veteran; both have just the perfect look and excel at playing both the laughs and the scares. De Jonge, a total newcomer, excels especially in the teenager role.

True, the twist isn’t the greatest one Shyamalan has ever given us, and the found footage conceit is both tired and the cause of some truly incomprehensible shots at the movie’s conclusion. The film raises a fascinating thematic parallel between scary horror and Alzheimer’s, without really doing anything of note with it. And the less said about young actor Ed Oxenbould’s rapping, the better.

Regardless, The Visit provides hints that maybe M. Night Shyamalan has a legitimate comeback in him.

The Visit opens Friday at UA King of Prussia, Reel Cinemas Anthony Wayne 5, AMC Plymouth Meeting Mall 12 and Regal Edgemont Square 10, among other local theaters.