Movie Review- The Visit

I had low expectations for The Visit, and was pleasantly surprised by how not-awful it was.M. Night Shyamalan has all but ruined his reputation, and found-footage movies are notorious for being garbage heaps masquerading as movies. Surprisingly the combination of washed-up director and cheap horror movies works.

The strongest part of The Visit is lead actors' performances. The two child actors were convincing playing siblings, and were surprisingly charming. Somehow the kid from Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day gives a good performance. I thought he was terribly annoying in the aforementioned film, but here his annoying middle school kid attitude brings fairly effective comic relief. The actors playing the grandparents do a good job of playing creepy old people, even if they do go into over-the-top camp by the end. Found-footage movies typically have a reality show feeling to them, so acting abilities are not required. The fact that The Visit bothered to have decent actors is a breath of refreshing air in a stale subgenre.

The Visit is ultimately a horror-comedy, but I wish the film had gone for straight horror. The main characters have some good sibling banter, but the rest of the movie's humor falls flat. The movie is intentionally campy, but the ending goes so over-the-top it stops being funny. It feels like Shyamalan was trying to pass off a weak ending with the excuse of "but it's supposed to be cheesy". There is also a terrible repeated joke where the younger brother is a wannabe rapper. We are subjected to not one, but three cringe-inducing freestyle raps from a 13-year-old during the movie. A movie needs approximately zero rapping middle school children to be truly good.

This being a found-footage movie, The Visit suffers from every problem the subgenre has. The movie requires heavy suspension of disbelief. Why would a sane person still be filming themselves at this point? Why would a sane person be filming banal filler scenes in the first place? That's found-footage logic for you. Strangely, The Visit eschews the subgenre's requisite dropped camera ending in favor of a saccharine ending that drags on much too long. I would have actually preferred the cliche ending in this case.

The Visit is not a great movie by any means, but it is much better than it could have been. It could have been another laughably bad entry in Shyamalan's filmography, but there are some effective elements at work. It is occasionally funny and occasionally creepy, which is more than I was expecting. If you are looking for a dumb-but-fun diversion, The Visit is worth visiting.