Review
"Would you mind getting inside the oven to clean it?" - Nana
Becca and Tyler are taking a trip to a remote Pennsylvania farm to meet their grandparents for the first time, oh and to allow Mom a chance for a trip with her boyfriend. Once at the farm Becca, a budding film maker, and Tyler, a white bread rapper, run into the sort of quintessential American grandparents down Home town U.S.A way. Nana cooks up a storm and Pop Pop does dude things outside on the farm, like dropping suspicious looking packages off at a shed out in the fields.
Tyler starts to notice things aren't exactly on the right side of the sanity line; Becca puts it down to old people doing odd things. As the strange happenings escalated even Becca is forced to acknowledge something isn't quite right with the oldsters. Nana goes buck naked crazy at night, Pop Pop does poop poop in his pants and my what a big knife Nana has. Are we just talking senility and dementia or is there something more sinister happening? Becca and Tyler are about to discover we all go a little crazy sometimes.
This was a weird one landing on my personal review queue; someone else would have been more adept I'm sure. Anyways we're talking the latest M. Night flick, a return to out and out horror by the Director, and a found footage/mockumentary style of film making, neither of which really has me buzzing. Okay cards on the table I really enjoyed each of M. Night's movies up to Lady In The Water, starting with that movie the Director lost me in a big way though there was some merit in Devil if I had to be fair dinkum. Food footage, c'mon really, Jet would be across that but I'm finding the format increasingly worthless in a narrative way. So combine the two and I'm not your Prom date folks! It came as a real shocker then that I got down and funky with The Visit, M. Night is back baby and he has something to say. Let's trip the light fantastic and groove to one of the more innovative Directors working out of Hollywood.
Firstly the elephant in the room, lets brand that bad boy and get it out of the way, yes there is a trademark M. Night twist in the tail going down. The Director is infamous for inserting twists, in some cases where one doesn't really belong, and in The Visit he's back to his old tricks, though I don't imagine for one second most true horror fans won't see the big reveal coming from about the ten minute mark. So a lot of the dweebs that refer to M. Night in racist terms, you come across as complete wastes of oxygen by the way, won't see it coming, anything that requires an iota of thinking loses these twats, but horror fans with the radar up are going to pick it pretty quickly. Normally this would be a hiccup in the groove but it worked out fine as I spent most of the movie nodding in approval as M. Night kept the clues coming at us. Yes the surprise ending is well crafted, and no it doesn't come out of left field, to a certain morbid degree it does come across as satisfying as well. If you can hold your analysis till the end credits roll you are in for a good time when the big reveal goes down.
M. Night has his horror tactics down pat, there's some chilling aspects to this movie that will have most dinkum horror fans high fiving each other. Nana at night going werewolf, as Tyler puts it, is unnerving to say the least, Michael Myers with teeth comes to mind. Pop Pop is just brimming with strangeness, including the fore mentioned shed and an unhealthy dose of paranoia. Perhaps the only weakness I found here was the general lack of interest from the Hospital authorities, people not showing up, not having seen them, surely the Police might have been contacted. There were some favourite scenes going down, the game of hide and seek under the house - talk about your romping wolf, Nana doing Nana things at night, and of course Tyler's discoveries in the mysterious shed. Everything is slightly deranged before going bat poo crazy while winking at classic fairy tales, its engrossing stuff.
As a script writer M. Night has always been pretty strong, rocking out the developments smoothly with no audience jarring left field developments. Having spotted the twist early I could groove to what the Writer had happening here, the texture he put into the script, and how solidly everything hung together. Even the infamous nappy scene, watch the movie if unaware - you can't miss it, is logical and had me groaning. While I'm not about to say there is character development, beyond the kids maybe finding something out about themselves, I will say each of the main characters acts completely within the framework of their motivations and the situations they find themselves in. There are no unnecessary scenes; everything builds on previous scenes to romp along to a shattering climax.
Got to say the acting in this pilgrimage to the House of Madness is a mixed bag, so there's another issue confronting potential viewers and something I seem to be in a minority in regards to. Olivia DeJonge (Becca) gets to play an overly pretentious snob, so I wasn't on board her performance from the get go. DeJonge may be able to act but her character here is completely unsympathetic. Similar Ed Oxenbould's (Tyler) character is instantly irritating, white kids shouldn't rap, especially if the rap is jaw displacing awful. I was really hoping these two characters would end up in the oven or down the well. Conversely Deanna Dunagan (Nana) and Peter McRobbie (Pop Pop) are superb, was buying their characters due to the performance being delivered, two thumbs up for the casting choice and character delivery.
Did I mention this one is of the mockumentary breed of horror flicks? Okay before you rampage off into the night the approach works like a one armed paper hanger as M. Night rocks it behind the director's megaphone. There's none of that shaky cam that makes you wonder if the local area has just been hit by an earthquake, the taping is logical rather than the "for Christ's sake who would keep filming" frame of reference, and it looks pretty realistic, and not staged for the cameras. While a lot of twats have been claiming the end of the food footage sub-genre, and being proved wrong again and again, it's movies like The Visit that will keep the concept viable for future projects. Got to admit I didn't even notice the approach in this movie after the first ten minutes, yes it's that good.
Good to see M. Night is back rocking the horror world after a few less than successful movies that had even us wondering if the Director hadn't lost the plot completely. I was having a good time during The Visit and have no issues fully endorsing the flick, found footage approach and all. Sure there are some slight irritations going down and the vast majority of horror fans are going to see the twist lumbering over the far horizon but, and it's an important but, M. Night gets the thrills and chills working like a brought thing. Give it a go, M. Nights best work since the tragically underrated The Village failed to be understood by the great unwashed.
M. Night is back baby and he's kicking goals!