After a disastrous three-film run culminating in After Earth, a science-fiction mega-dud and an arguable career nadir for everyone involved, previously beloved writer/director M. Night Shyamalan aims to reinvigorate his brand with The Visit. A small-scale found-footage film blending humor and bump-in-the-night menace, it finds teenagers Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) journeying to rural Pennsylvania to stay with their grandparents. Their single mother (Kathryn Hahn) is estranged from "Nana" (Deanna Dunagan) and "Pop Pop" (Peter McRobbie) due to a severe dispute in the past, and Becca and Tyler have never met them before. The elderly couple's behavior is peculiar bordering on sinister, but is the cause simply senility or more complicated?

Such a question in and of itself reveals The Visit as a bit of an ageist film, finding revulsion and dread in dementia, incontinence, etc. Despite this, the concept is not a bad one: the misty farm is a just-right fusion of foreboding and quaint, and discomfort caused by a generation gap is a recognizable experience and a fertile subject. And veteran character players Dunagan (a Tony winner for originating the August: Osage County role later played by Meryl Streep on screen) and McRobbie are game; they are not portraying three-dimensional beings so much as changing-from-moment-to-moment plot devices (they are sweet! they are absolutely insane!), but both are clearly committed, without vanity, and eager to dig into their haunted-house subversion of Rockwellian types. Sadly, Shyamalan steps wrong in several other areas. The adolescent protagonists, for instance, are a chore to endure: she is an ultra-precious "artiste" chirping inauthentic film theory and pop psychology, and he raps with a lisp (Christ) and says pop-star names instead of cursing (save me).

The genre blending, presumably employed by Shyamalan to undermine his reputation for earnest pomposity, also results in tonal confusion more often than pleasure or invention. It always feels as if the jump-scare horror is disrupting the absurdist-sarcastic comedy or the absurdist-sarcastic comedy is disrupting the jump-scare horror; the two approaches never gel in a crisp, productive way. As for the expected Shyamalan twist, it is unnerving enough and unveiled in a neat way, though it does not deepen or broaden the experience the way the third acts of The Sixth Sense and The Village did. (Those, by the way, are two of my favorite films, as is Signs.) It is more just an immediate, superficial urban-legend jolt—who is running the asylum?—positioned to bring the film to its violent conclusion.

C

A few more observations:

1. The film's idea of mental illness is almost so dopey and retrograde as to be charming. OH, NO! NANA AND POP POP ARE INMATES ESCAPED FROM THE LOONY BIN! It reminds me of the "hook-man" urban legend.

2. It is a big moment, and it is elicited a huge response from my awful, awful teenage crowd, but I am not sure I can entirely deal with the grandson's face being mushed into the contents of the adult diaper. Just so disgusting and desperate.

3. Those raps. Egad! And Shyamalan is obviously convinced they are the height of hilarity, even playing one more during the end credits.

I actually found the portrayal of mental illness/dementia in this film bordering on offensive and insulting to real old people suffering from them. Left a bitter aftertaste.

I see where you are coming from. I see it as ageism first and foremost. It regards the elderly as inherently disgusting and frightening.

This was an absolute blast. What a huge return to form for M. Night Shyamalan. It is definitely a horror comedy as certain aspects of it are absolutely hilarious and ridiculous, but it actually does a really great job of developing tension and there are some truly unsettling moments. And the twist is awesome and completely took me by surprise - I wasn't expecting it at all. The twenty minutes or so that follow the big reveal had me on the edge of my seat. This is a demented fun house of a movie and Shyamalan seems to be having fun behind the camera for the first time in a long time. I loved it. A-

With The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan has made handily his best film since his divisive 2004 film The Village - but considering the weakness of that slate and the tonal insanity of this film, that statement is damning with faint praise. Word is that Shyamalan shot three different versions of the film - pure horror, pure comedy, and a mix of the two - and the indecisiveness of genre shows. In some scenes, it's a comedy of varying effectiveness. In some scenes, it's a drama about fixing old familial wounds. And in relatively few scenes before the nutty third act, it's a PG-13 horror with jump scares that walk a razor-thin line between intentional and unintentional comedy. It's a mess in which the fascination lies not in the story that Shyamalan is trying to tell, but rather in his attempt to figure out what kind of movie he's presenting from scene-to-scene - it's that tonally unfocused. All that being said, it thankfully doesn't take itself too seriously and is occasionally enjoyable. Unfortunately, the erratic nature of the film extends to the two child actors in front of the camera. Olivia DeJonge does nice, sympathetic work as the older sister, even if her well-executed dramatic scenes feel like they belong in a completely different movie (although that's a fault of the storytelling, not hers). On the other hand, Ed Oxenbould's younger brother is so thoroughly annoying that I spent the majority of the running time hoping that the grandparents would find some deliciously perverse way of killing him off before he could use more already-dated slang, make another obnoxious action while in possession of his sister's camera, or rap (WHY?!?). The found footage angle is also a mixed bag. On one hand, the format forces Shyamalan to go for a more grounded and less self-indulgent directorial style; on the other hand, it runs into the Essential Problem with Found Footage Films (i.e. "Why are they filming this?"), and could just as easily be accomplished in a straightforward approach without losing anything valuable to the story - even despite the attempt to justify the technique by having the female protagonist be a budding documentary filmmaker. I certainly wouldn't say that The Visit is a return to form for Shyamalan, but it's at least a step in a more positive direction, for what admittedly little that might be saying. There are traces of a solid film in The Visit, but Shyamalan mixes them with too many scenes and approaches that don't work that the final product doesn't gel.

C

And... Damn, was that scene in which the kid gets shit smeared in his face cathartic! Sure, it's not the death that I hoped for in the review (which would have spared us from yet another stupid, stupid rap), but it's close enough.

Disappointed reactions here are so mixed. I thought it was such a blast and the script was a huge strong point - I loved how everything tied together.

I quite liked this actually.

Loved this. It was just so much fun. It's hilarious and creepy. I loved the setting. Deanna Dunagan was great in it. Such a fun time at the movies. Easily my favorite Shyamalan film.

8/10 (A-)

It's a good enough return for Shyamalan, but it's nothing great. The acting is quite solid for the most part especially from Kathryn Hahn and the actors who played the grandparents. The kids were alright eventhough I still don't understand why Shyamalan gave them such weird quirks which made them feel less like real kids IMO. I never found it very creepy or scary, but it did manage to get a chuckle out of me every now and then and overall it was pretty entertaining.

The Visit

Hmm. Strange film. While it was creepy in parts, one thing didn't make sense; would a parent just let her two children travel the country and arrive to see their grandparents (that they'd never seen before) without any checking by the parent with the grandparents? I just don't believe it. I don't believe that the grandkids would never have seen even a photo of their grandparents before. And I know that the mother had a falling out with them, but surely if your two most precious things in the world are going to visit your mum and dad, you would surely swallow a bit of pride and at least have a phone call to arrange stuff (like "did they arrive yet?" and "take care of them" chats). It just seemed too convenient in order to make this film work. But other than that it wasn't a bad 90 minutes. It was creepy and those "grandparents" are pretty eerie. To be honest, anything from M. Night Shyamalan that is more enjoyable than The Last Airbender and After Earth is a win in my book. I remember a lot of talk at the time of its release about whether it was a comedy or a horror or both. Well, it's a horror, in my opinion. Sure, there were some humorous parts, but it's hardly gag city. The premise is horrific and the dialogue is creepy. Horror.

The two kids are pretty annoying, and I've never liked the actress that plays their mum. I disliked the camerawork. Every time the camera was placed down it was in the PERFECT spot - it was just too convenient, and a lot of the kids' actions didn't seem authentic (hitting the door knob off with the camera, for example). The twist reveal wasn't all that surprising, though I admit I didn't guess it beforehand (despite glaringly obvious hints throughout) - I guess I just didn't care by that stage. The tension comes and goes, never fully gripping me, but it does have doses of quality.

I hope it grows one me.

C+

Yes, this movie steps on its own toes with the hip-hop asides and fussy use of the found-footage conceit. It ends up overshadowing what is cool: the grandparents and the beautiful/creepy farm.

This was wildly entertaining, I think it is Shyamalan's best film to date. The atmosphere is always eerie and intense, and the performances,are uniformly good. The twist is great and unexpected, and the conclusion is satisfying.

A

I liked this much more than Sicario in terms of supposed Fall thrillers.

I thought this was awful. Not scary, not suspenseful, the twist is too predictable and found footage style has become soooo tiresome.

I actually kinda liked this, mainly because it was more creepy/fun than scary. I thought the kids were pretty good. The part where she finds the camera scared the crap out of me.

B ish

I liked the movie a little bit, specially for the atmosphere it builds and dark humor it had throughout. I didn't like the ending cause you can see the twist way earlier and the whole setup of the movie is also stupid but it was still a decent time. Wasn't horror enough because of the premise. One of the recent good Shyamalan movies on par with Devil

5/10.

I actually saw the twist coming a mile away, like when they first met the grandparents. That said, there were some genuinely scary scenes (Hide and Seek under the house was hilariously terrifying) and some enjoyably creepy camp. The tone of the film shifts wildly, which almost seems an effective gambit to add to the audience's unease. But the portrayal of 'mentally ill' people was ridiculous, as were the girl's film-making aspirations and the boy's awful raps.

B-

The first half of this movie is pretty good. It sets up the kids as likeable heroes and the Grandparents as friendly wild cards. I was interested to see where the story was going. But the deeper we go in to the mystery the less interesting it is, with a rather obvious twist. And Becka, who I liked for almost all of the movie, suddenly is so confident in her cleverness that she becomes Fred from Scooby-Doo. "Even though we already know we are in a dangerous place with crazy people falsely claiming to be our family, let's split up and look for clues!" What the fuck are you doing girl?