24/10/2016.
Two siblings become increasingly frightened by their grandparents' disturbing behavior while visiting them on vacation.
Spoiler free area!
The Visit is written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan who brought us classics such as "The Sixth Sense", "Signs" and ..."The Happening" which was not his strongest performance behind the camera. It stars Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould as the siblings as well as Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie as the grandparents.
This film tries its hand at the "found footage" format made popular by the 1999 film "The Blair Witch Project" and made equally unpopular in recent years by the movies that try to cash in on "The Blair Witch Project"s success, which is new for M. Night Shyamalan and a major concern for me.
Luckily for me who gets incredibly nauseous while watching the found footage genre because of all the shaking of the camera, i found this movie to pull off some excellent camera work while not giving me a headache. This film has one of the better reasons for being filmed through a POV camera not just someone for a convenient reason has a camera, so there is an excuse for the found footage to exist in the first place. The female sibling is an aspiring film maker and demonstrates this throughout the movie by trying to capture the perfect cinematic shots, having a believable reason backed up with actual film making techniques inside the found footage itself makes it look better and seem more realistic to the viewer.
I liked when both siblings each had a camera during certain scenes and the perspective of the viewer would switch between each of them. The grandmothers behavior gave me chills at times and that doesn't happen to me easily. The jump scare in this movie is very warranted and is not cheap, you almost know its coming, but it still got me. The scares are few and far between which i liked as a viewer because it kept the tension high and i was constantly on the edge of my seat wondering what horrors the next night would bring.
Unfortunately this film did fall back on the typical found footage horror movie cliches at two times throughout, they didn't ruin the film but they didn't have to be there. That is really my only complaint about this movie.
Even though the marketing campaign and trailer made this seem like another found footage horror film, its anything but. The film is both a horror/thriller film and an intentional comedy film that can seamlessly switch between the two genres without coming off as a try hard comedy film, all while maintaining the edge of your seat suspense of the thriller genre.
All of the performances in this film are excellent. The male sibling is funny at times and annoying at times but really grows on you by the end of the film. The grandmothers performance was the best in the whole movie for me and definitely worthy of phrase. Don't get me wrong the siblings, mother and grandfather were also excellent but the grandmother stole every scene she was in.
Its great to see M. Night Shyamalan back doing what he does best, creating suspenseful movies with great twists. After some box office bombs of movies in recent years, this movie is sure to put him back on the map. Keep it up. Similar to "The Witch" this movie is one of my top 10 movies of 2015.
8/10 - This movie is a great horror/thriller, best enjoyed knowing nothing about it beforehand.
Anyway that is my review for The Visit. If you are still here thanks for reading, if you have a different opinion leave a comment, if you agree with me leave a comment.
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PS. Film reviews are subjective, the opinions contained in this review are mine, others will have a different opinion.
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