The Visit
starring Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie and Kathryn Hahn,
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Rating: ♦♦♦◊◊
15-year-old Becca is making a documentary about her mother’s life. With her 13-year-old brother, Tyler, she travels to visit her maternal grandparents whom she has never met, filming everything as she goes. A severe falling out between their mother, Loretta, and her mother’s parents when Loretta was a young single mom means that the children were raised isolated from their grandparents. However, the internet facilitated contact and reconciliation. Plus Loretta has a new boyfriend and the children want to get out of her way so they can be romantic together.
So they arrive in the countryside to spend a week with Grandma and Grandpa who are farmers. On the very first day weird things start happening in the farmhouse. The grandparents are acting weird. The children have no experience with their grandparents so they are unsure what’s normal and what’s not. Any weirdness they put down to the peculiarities of the elderly - a devise that gets well over-used.
But by the end of the week the children can’t take the weirdness any longer. Their mother is home from her romantic getaway cruise with her boyfriend and Becca and Tyler Skype her demanding immediate pick-up. On the Skype camera Loretta sees the grandparents in the garden outside the window. The problem is they are not Loretta’s parents. Becca and Tyler have spent the week with strangers pretending to be their grandparents. So where are the real grandparents? Of course, they are murdered and hidden in the basement and the imposters are dangerous psychopaths from a local sanitarium. Don’t go into the basement!! Get out of the house!!
Strange they didn’t smell anything. But what do I know about human decomposition? Nothing.
I don’t think M. Night Shyamalan movies are particularly scary. I’ve been disappointed by more than one of his films. (Signs, 2002, starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix was such a mediocre disappointment that I still haven’t gotten over the ill-feeling generated by it.)