The Visit

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: M. Night Shyamalan/Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie and Kathryn Hahn

The man who puts the hack in hackneyed; M. Night Shyamalan, has brought his latest horror flick to theaters but its only horrifying quality is its famished imagination. Like most of Shyamalan's films; the premise shows promise but he is unable to exploit his own ideas for real scares or suspense though he isn't bad at establishing mood and atmosphere. What we get mostly is horrible dialogue, even worse acting (Shyamalan's fault, mostly) and a once-imaginative horror-film storytelling innovation that should be retired once and for all. I'm talking of course about character-generated film footage--a close relative to found-footage--which has become the default horror film gimmick in this century. That Shyamalan would resort to its usage tells me he's become lazy or his already-shallow well of storytelling tricks has become parched.

The Visit tells the story of a mother (an unconvincing Kathryn Hahn) and her two children; the teen Becca (a stomach-churningly annoying Olivia DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould, who manages to one-up DeJonge in the annoying category). Though their mother has been estranged from her parents since she was nineteen, she has agreed to let Becca and Tyler stay with them for a week. Becca, an aspiring documentary filmmaker, hopes to film the experience.

The opening scenes where Becca and Tyler interact are marred by unnatural dialogue one might hear on any Nickelodeon sit-com. Becca talks earnestly into the camera about documentarian techniques while her brother quickly becomes an irritant with his lispy witticisms, which sound too smart and pat for a kid his age.

We learn the father left the mother sometime in the past, which hasn't caused the kids any undue stress or grief.

While they set off for their grandparents, their mother goes on vacation with her new boyfriend.
When Becca and Tyler step out of the train, their grandparents wave and welcome them with a large sign. Their grandmother--Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and their grandfather--Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), seem to be typical, genial grandparents; baking biscuits and cookies and taking the kids for walks in the woods. Becca and Tyler learn their grandparents also spend time as counselors for a rehab center.

All seems normal until Becca and Tyler begin hearing strange noises after bedtime. Upon opening the door to their bedroom, they find a naked Nana scratching the walls. Spooked, they immediately shut the door. Perplexed and anxious, the kids begin to notice other strange behavior. Seeing Pop Pop chopping wood, Tyler calls to him, only to be ignored. When he does turn to acknowledge Tyler's call, he turns away without calling back. Pop Pop also issues a mysterious warning about the basement, which he says is full of dangerous mold.

Later, Tyler finds a pile of soiled adult diapers in the tool shed--a very disturbing development. Out of Pop Pop's earshot, Nana explains to the kids that the soiled diapers are their grandfather's way of dealing with an embarrassing problem. Later, Pop Pop and Nana sit Becca and Tyler down in the living room to explain their odd behavior, which they attribute to Sundowning syndrome; a condition where symptoms such as disorientation, confusion, auditory hallucinations, yelling, pacing and suspicion become common. Pop Pop issues another ominous warning to Becca and Tyler about keeping their bedroom door locked after 9:30 p.m.
More creepiness ensues when Nana asks Becca to clean the oven by climbing inside. Entering the oven tentatively, Nana urges her to climb further in. The nail-biting moment, when we anticipate Nana shutting the oven door, never comes but the scene effectively establishes a feeling of dread.

Becca and Tyler decide to film their grandparent's odd behavior and even interview a former patient from the rehab center named Stacey (Celia Keenan-Bolger), who comes to the house with a blueberry pie. The interview, like most of the others Becca conducts, sound very unnatural and phony. The ubiquitous cameras she and her brother always have on their person or situate in the house become unrealistically intrusive, which is a narrative shortcoming in most films of this variety.

Curious about what Nana and Pop Pop actually do after 9:30 p.m., Tyler sets up cameras about the house to capture the weird happenings. In a subsequent scene that is unforgivably Paranormal Activity, we see the living room from the perspective of Tyler's strategically-placed camera. The living room's stillness is disturbed by Nana's frenetic presence, which includes pacing and racing about the room. A jolt at the end of the scene seems very obvious and cheap. That Shyamalan would deliberately employ the fixed camera scare tactic that Paranormal Activity has bled to the grave shows a glaring, creative lapse in his film-making.

After Becca and Tyler decide the situation at their grandparent's house has become too dangerous, they contact their mother via Skype, who, when she sees Nana and Pop Pop, reveals something shocking that provides the film a clever twist for which Shyamalan is famous.
Following on the heels of their mother's revelation is Becca and Tyler's basement investigation, which provides horrific corroboration for their mother's claim.

I credit Shyamalan for imparting some creepiness to the climactic sequence, where Becca is locked inside a bedroom with Nana; who paces madly and makes all manner of hissing sounds, threatening the teen's life. Meanwhile, downstairs, Pop Pop and Tyler have a showdown of their own, which partly involves unpleasantness with his soiled diapers.

The film, like many of Shyamalan's other works, deals with families in crisis or who have become symbolically fractured. In this case, the Norman Rockwellian conception of blissful grandparents/grandchildren relations is turned on its head. Becca and Tyler's own family, where divorce has sundered familial cohesion, serves the film's overarching theme about family dysfunction.

I think Shyamalan's film had the makings of a satisfying horror film but so many things conspire against it, namely the acting; the movie's biggest liability. Shyamalan is mostly to blame for this. Very little of the dialogue sounds natural; most of it seems canned and in Becca and Tyler's cases, it is often too-sophisticated and irritatingly precocious. Dunagan and McRobbie could have been a lot more menacing. Most of the time Pop Pop and Nana behave like over-the-top community theater actors rather than dangerously volatile psychotics. The performances also come off as jokey; Pop Pop and Nana often seem more comical than frightening though they have their creepy moments.

The most aggravating flaw in the film is the aforementioned first-person footage, which becomes quickly tiresome. The second most aggravating aspect of the film are the two leads. Why Shyamalan would cast two annoying Australian actors (DeJonge and Oxenbould) when America has a warehouse chock full of its own is mystifying. Hahn is given little to do except appear via Skype, where her transmissions seem as unconvincing as her acting. Never for a moment was I convinced Hahn was Becca and Tyler's mother.

Once the pivotal Shyamalanian twist arrives in the story, the film staggers toward a predictable end.

I think Shyamalan has storytelling gifts but his Achilles heel are his scripts. I think he would do better to adapt someone else's material. His films have great twists but are always uneven. The violent climax in this film should have been harrowing and pulse-quickening but it only made me feel impatient.

I didn't stick around for Tyler's silly hip-hop performance over the end credits; I had already had enough of it earlier in the film when he entertained a black ticket man aboard the train, who was implausibly friendly and accommodating.

Shyamalan has become the film-goer's whipping boy, for very valid reasons, though he has made a few interesting films. The Visit will do little to mend his reputation. Too bad; I thought the film's story showed promise. Oh well; I'm sure he'll keep trying.