The Visit (2015)

** ½ out of ****

Way back in 1999 we had the first big-time “found footage” film with “The Blair Witch Project”. A lot of people thought it was silly, but I thought they just didn't get it because it creeped the hell out of me.....

Unfortunately a lot of filmmakers thought it was a wonderful plot device, as well as a great way to keep production costs down. So since then we've seen a glut of films using that same tactic. Some have been decent, and a couple have been outstanding, but for the most part they have just been repetitive. Most of the time they're just movies finding silly ways for characters to have video cameras going all the time, filming stuff they ought to be running away from.

So when something pretty good comes along in the genre, it's worth a look. I've actually had a copy of “The Visit” for several weeks before bothering to have a look at it, and I have to admit that this one is pretty clever. Spooky and creepy, with a lot more character development than you usually see in these things, and when it was over I actually felt like I'd watched a pretty decent little flick.

Paula Jamison (Kathryn Hahn) left home when she was a teenager after a terrible fight with her parents. Now, 15 years later, those parents have reached out to her asking to see their grandchildren, Rebecca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould). Paula and her new boyfriend want to go on a cruise so she puts the kids, ages 15 and 13, on a train to go meet the grandparents and off she goes for a week of sun and fun.

Rebecca is an enterprising young kid and wants to make this visit a documentary, teenage kids meeting the grandparents for the very first time, which gives a plausible explaination as to why she's filming everything. And though the grandparents (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) initially seem quaint and normal, it isn't long before weird shit starts to go down. First, Nana has some sort of condition that makes her lose her mind at night. Pop-pop warns them not to come out of their room after 9:30pm. On the couple of occasions that they do, the find Nana running around the house naked, pawing at the walls and basically barking at the moon.

As the visit goes on, Nana and Pop-pop get weirder and weirder until the kids, initially amused by this odd behavior, start to get scared. And as we, the audience, get to know the old coots better all we can think is, “Run away kiddies. Run away.”

This movie has been considered a bit of a return to form for director M. Night Shyamalan, and though I guess it's true it really isn't like any of his other films. I quite liked several of his most panned movies (“The Village” and “Devil” in particular), so I haven't been as disappointed with him over the years as the industry has. And this movie has a last reel “twist” just like all of Night's films, and I thought this one was a good one – creeped the hell out of me, anyway....

This isn't a movie you can watch over and over, like “Unbreakable” or “The Sixth Sense” but it is definitely worth seeing. It's tense, spooky and funny, and when it's over you feel satisfied. For a low budget horror-comedy, that's a pretty good deal.