Matthew Brady's Movie Review of The Visit (2015)

At least it was better than After Earth
Matthew Brady - wrote on 09/28/15

Can M. Night Shamalamadingdong return to he's old roots?...almost.

The story is about a harried single mother leaves her two young children with her grandparents for the weekend. But when they get back, things seem different - and so very wrong.

What happened to M. Night Shyamalan? That's the biggest question that everyone on the world wide web tried to answer, but we never got a clear answer. I mean seriously, how can you start off so high with success like: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, then suddenly out of nowhere fall straight flat on your face with non-stop sh*t like: After Earth, Lady in the Water, Last Airbender and The Happening. And it went on from there as every time M. Night release a new film it always turns out bad and pretty much everyone as just given up on the fact that he can make a good movie again. Shyamalan is now an easy target for criticism and if Shyamalan did make a good movie everyone will just hate it anywhere just because... it's Shyamalan.

Now we've got he's new film called "The Visit" and I can safely say that this movie wasn't terrible at all, but I can't sit here acting like it's the greatest thing ever made just because Shyamalan finally made a movie that wasn't the worse thing on the planet like he's other ones. At least it was better than After Earth.

First the positives: Ed Oxenbould and Olivia DeJonge (the two kid actors) did a great job nailing american accents, because both of them are Australian. But their acting in the movie was alright, I mean they did the best their could with the material that was given to them and they did good.

I'm happy that M. Night finally went back to the low budget type of movies, because he seriously can't do big budge movies since there's many possibilities for him to f**k up. When you got a small budget, small crew and a small movie, it's hard to make huge mistakes. And yes there are mistakes in this movie but it wasn't as bad or just embarrassing as M. nights previous films.

The movie did have some creepy moments that worked and wasn't terrible like I thought it was going to be. I'm actually surprised that Shyamalan made a movie like this that wasn't the Last Airbender or After Earth. The Visit had elements of being a great horror film, but sadly that's when the problems I have for the movie came in.

For the problems: This entire movie is marketed as a horror comedy, so basically all the scenes in the film that was suppose to be funny just came off embarrassing. The movie would have been funny if the film was meant to be taken seriously like M. Night last films, which was funny. I think the comedy would have been right there, I mean Shyamalan wants us to be scared and also laugh since this is a "horror comedy", and too be honest the horror elements in this movie worked more than the comedy itself. I think you've got to be a true genius to blend the perfect humor and horror together to make it work.

The writing was a bit meh, some of the jokes that the two kids said got stale after awhile and if you want a "it's so bad that it's good" type of movie I would honestly look somewhere as this doesn't land on any of those categories.

Overall The Visit was surprisingly not as bad as I thought it was going to be. It's not a great movie but at least it's better than he's other films that we had from him recently.