The Visit Review

Review of The Visit (2015) by screenqueeen: 👍 3.5/5

HOOPTOBER 9.0 30/32

Coming to this a bit late but having been on board for Shyamalan's stuff since people have said he's gone off the rails (by the time VISIT and HAPPENING hit our faces) it's easy to see how he experiments within a given structure. Here it's a mockumentary being made by two kids: Rebecca, the director, and Tyler aka T-Diamond Stylus, her brother and b-camera operator. The format's used well, never is the interview approach cumbersome and Rebecca's use of vocabulary feels real despite how unnatural it may seem at first. You can tell a wannabe film student that way, maybe something plucked out of Shyamalan's history, but never annoying as some focuses on film freaks in film tend to be.

So here's the thing about THE VISIT: you'll call it right away (I did). Some of the terrifying moments are split between mildly unsettling or laugh-out-loud funny, but never is it at the expense of the grandparents in the story. For a story that goes where it does into a topic that has a terrible track record of demonization, plus lack of respect for the real people who go through things like that every day with or without help, never is it the butt of a joke or a victimization of them. It's simply part of the unfortunate equation that makes this particular horror movie what it is. If you celebrate uniquity in your genre film you should give it a shot.