THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Closure is pretty hard to do and if you doubt that, look at The Visit.
PLOT
The 2015 film is told in the style of found footage documented by two siblings, Becca & Tyler who live in Philadelphia with their divorced mother Loretta Jamison. They are planning to have a five day visit with their grandparents Marja & Frederick in Masonville, while Loretta goes on a cruise with her new boyfriend Miguel (Jorge Cordova). This is important to the kids because their mom hasn’t spoken to their parents in 15 years after marrying her high school teacher at the time they disapproved of, Corin (Benjamin Kane). Having never met their grandparents, they document their visit. Upon arrival, they’re referred to as Nana & Pop Pop who live in an isolate farmhouse and have two rules for the kids to follow: don’t go in the basement and go to sleep at 9:30 every evening. Within the first day, the grandparents appear pleasant until peculiar behavior gets documented starting the first night. On the first night, Becca finds Nana projectile vomiting. And by the following day, she and Tyler get chased by her during hide and seek. Midday, a man named Dr. Sam (Patch Darragh) asks for the grandparents but ironically, they’re out for a walk when the kids answer the door. Tyler would also find soiled diapers in the shed and when asking Nana about it, she confesses that Pop Pop is incontinent and is ashamed about it. When he takes the kids out through town, things get drastic when he tackles someone he suspects following him. At night, the kids see another strange occurrence when catching Nana claw the opposite door naked. On the second day, Nana apparently spills biscuit batter on Becca’s webcam on accident while making breakfast. The eldest daughter asks her grandpa if his wife is sick, which he admits she has sundowning dementia and she believes something bad is inside her, thus choosing to projectile vomit nightly. At the farmhouse, Becca is asked by Nana to dangerously clean the oven while inside. After this, she gets to ask her grandma questions for her documentary but it doesn’t go her liking due to Nana shaking violently over being asked why Loretta left. When Skyping with Loretta, Tyler shares his suspicion that something is wrong but his mother backs his sister’s claim that they shouldn’t overthink it. By nightfall again, they hear strange noises and only see Nana run past them multiple times. As another day goes by, the four go out to the woods and Becca considers getting an elixir for her mom. When they turn a corner, she gets caught up staring into a well. After returning to the house, the kids would later return to the well only to find nothing but water. Later on, they meet a neighbor named Stacey (Celia Keenan-Bolger) who tells them she knew their grandparents who volunteered at a hospital she was in during her rehabilitation and she gives thanks to them by gifting them treats. When Becca checks with Pop Pop, she catches him contemplating to take his life with a rifle. This gives enough encouragement for Becca to set up a camera in the living room to know what else does Nana do at night. On the fifth and final day, she gets proof that their grandma found the camera and almost killed them with a knife before a locked door stopped her. Stunned, they try to avoid her and Pop Pop as long as they could. Becca later interviews Pop Pop who shares that he got fired from his job when claiming he’d see a yellow eyed figure no one else saw. Tyler suspects their overall behavior to be strange, while his sister simply deduces it to be schizophrenia. After this, the kids see both grandparents argue with Stacey outside the house but don’t see the neighbor leave. Becca does get to achieve her elixir by tricking Nana into sharing an apology through another interview. The day doesn’t go completely the kids’ way when Becca cleans the oven again while inside and Nana pushes her in this time. Luckily, Tyler gets her sister out before it could get worse. With the webcam fixed, they get to Skype their mom again and re-confirm how odd the grandparents are by showing them to her for the first time. This would only shock Loretta severely as she confirms those aren’t her parents at all. Realizing her kids have been staying with strangers the whole time, she calls local authorities immediately. With no one answering, she decides to drive there herself and keep calling until she gets there. By then, the kids try to make a break for it until seeing Stacey hanging from a tree. With no other choice, they’re forced by the imposters to play Yahtzee with them and pretend like nothing is wrong. Becca sneaks into the basement to find her real grandparents. She finds their dead bodies in a dumpster, as well as a bloody hammer and uniforms from the mental hospital ‘Meadow Shade’, confirming the imposters to be escaped patients. Pop Pop catches her in the basement and traps her in the bedroom with Nana. As he does this, he confesses his& Nana’s real names are Mitchell & Claire who killed Marja & Frederick out of jealousy upon knowing they reached out to the kids. With the latter being in a psychotic fit due to being past curfew, Becca defends herself by stabbing her with a glass shard from a broken mirror. By the time she comes back downstairs, Tyler kills Mitchell by bashing his head with a refrigerator door. When they escape the house, they reunite with their mom who arrives with police. In the aftermath of an awry visit, Loretta finally explains what happened between her and her parents that led to their disconnection: It turns out they had an argument so severe that she struck her mother and her father chose to strike her back, thus leaving and ignoring all their attempts to contact her. Because of this, she tells her Becca to never hold onto anger over her dad’s abandonment the way she did with her parents. As the family finds closure from another, the film ends with Becca deciding to include footage of her dad after originally deciding not to.
THOUGHTS
My expectations were severely low going into this because M Night Shyamalan had a bad run for an exact decade. Everyone has their opinion in how they feel with The Village, but most generally agree his consistency of bad films started with The Lady in the Water. Having said that, it puts me in relief to see what a step up we got instead. Due to the style being found footage, Shyamalan has the chance to provide an appropriate pace to move the tension smoothly enough to keep me invested from start to finish. The combo of editing & cinematography is done so well, a part of you is gonna think we’re seeing a legit raw draft of a documentary. Again, found footage was a great setting for this story because it leaves you guessing on what the truth is, due to how you can only know based on what you’re seeing. If done in a simple third person narrative, the case would’ve been cracked in likely 30 minutes and there wouldn’t be any true tension. With that being said, I had chills watching this throughout. We don’t want to expect the out of worst out of elderly people like our own grandparents since conditions like dementia or schizophrenia are past their control. But because those conditions make them act unpredictable, you have to prepare for the worst. That is why the story works out because you don’t want to own up to the possibility they are at fault when they really are. That is what makes this twist so effective because it’s too good to be true. Deanna Dunagan & Peter McRobbie were an electric pair as Mitchell & Claire because you want to mistake them as unintentional villains when in fact they’re about as diabolical as past ones we’ve seen because due to said conditions, they take their jealousy too far by killing innocent people just to have something they lost long ago and think they’ll get away with it with whatever facade they think they created. Little do they expect that they encounter two kids smart enough to within the first day things weren’t as they seemed. Olivia DeJonge & Ed Oxbenbould were a great pair of their own right as Becca & Tyler respectively because their only goal is to regain inner healing and create positive moments for the sake of their family at the brink of falling apart. What they have in common is identifying as artists which make them feel colorful, Becca’s love for film is what inspired her to make the doc and Tyler’s got his interest in hip hop music where he freestyles in spare time. What differs them apart though is how they cope with the absence of their dad. Becca doesn’t look in the mirror because she feels rejected and creates self loathing for herself to where she doesn’t think she deserves to see herself if her dad isn’t around anymore. Tyler becomes a germaphobe for the sake of having some form of control and the only memory of his dad that had meaning to him was how unresponsive he was to him over losing a school football game, freezing mid game. He tried to move past it because he was aware grudging about it doesn’t undo what happened nor make it better. He didn’t want to blame himself for being the reason his dad left. Whether or not that was the reason, he and his sister use their inner anger to their advantage when defending themselves from an unlikely threat. Of course, these intense turn of events were only possible due to their mother’s personal decisions that led to a broken family. Kathryn Hahn ensures us that Loretta isn’t a bad person per se since she proves to be a caring parent to her kids. She gives them the space to bond with what she though were her parents, leading to her going into protective mode when the truth is out. With the lack of pictures of her past (which could’ve ended the story before it started), it proved she wasn’t really neglectful but more regretful of it. In her adulthood, she accepts that her selfishness over a fantasy is what led to her turning her back on her parents in a fallout that could’ve been avoided. The fact she could’ve reached out sooner kills her inside because she was ashamed that it was all for nothing. Her telling Becca to not hold onto anger is so important for us to hear as this whole story is telling us to make whatever amends you have to make as you never know when will be the last time you’ll see the ones you’ll love. If you ask me, I think the kids will take the advice serious as the credits show Becca resume looking in the mirror and Tyler being able to rap about what they went through. There are a lot of things I give credit to, but then there are things that could’ve been done better. For example, how is Loretta so sure there won’t be internet in her childhood home before her kids get there? Just because there wasn’t any in her time doesn’t mean they wouldn’t change it up after she left. I did say Loretta not having any pictures of her parents is the red flag of what would play out, but Becca should’ve been curious on how no pictures were around the house. I mean that’s worse than not looking them up before moving forward in seeing them. Another thing, if Dr. Sam knew who escaped the hospital, which is what he wanted to tell the grandparents, how come there aren’t any cops until the end of the movie? If it’s a big deal two people escaped a mental hospital, they should be on lookout to the point they would’ve caught Mitchell tackling someone he mistook to have followed him. I’m even surprised Becca went along with cleaning the oven the second time when she knew Claire wasn’t her grandma. Also, it’s even crazy Stacey doesn’t follow up on the kids by explaining what happened at the hospital? Had she done that, they would’ve gone to the cops immediately and no other casualties could’ve happened. She also could’ve called the cops before even confirming what was going on. And what made Becca think Nana was watching tv, when she was in fact laughing at inner thoughts while staring at the window, since there was none on sight? She should’ve known that the moment she got there. Becca is even reckless to correct Pop Pop on who made the modern Yahtzee after knowing he’s not the real grandpa. I then wonder why the hell would Mitchell & Claire kill Stacey in broad daylight when they were willing to kill the real grandparents and hide their bodies? I know they’re delusional and I don’t want to root for the villains, but there's no point for them to lose consistency if they don’t want to get caught. And while it’s a good twist, how come the kids don’t smell the bodies in the basement? I know Mitchell lied about it being mold, but I feel like Becca could have downloaded research on mold the way she downloaded the meaning of sundowning. Other than that, this movie works out overall. In short, The Visit is Shyamalan’s long awaited step-up in quality storytelling as it is well paced thriller from start to finish. If you like the sub genre of found footage, check this out when you can.
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