The Visit (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: M. Night Shyamalan (The 6th Sense, Signs, Unbreakable, After Earth)
	Actors: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 03.09.2015, Cinemaxxx, MFFF2015
Synopsis: A single mom left her parents after a fight when she was nineteen. Now her two kids (DeJonge, Oxenbould) wish to visit their grand-parents (Dunagan, McRobbie) and shoot a documentary about the encounter.
Review: The talented M. Night Shyamalan pretty much stuck to the same style of movie-making between The 6th Sense (I haven't seen anything older from him) and The Happening, including Lady in the Water. He then tried some new things with The Last Airbender and After Earth with little success. I saw The Visit at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest and the director was present to introduce his movie, explaining that it was independently produced outside of the big studios system, because he wanted to find again this freedom of creativity, but consequently he was not sure that he would manage to get it distributed. The movie is shot in a hand-held documentary style which is trendy those days. The effect works well. The most interesting thing in the movie is (the director elaborated about this in his introduction) the conjunction of humour and creepiness that he wanted close to what David Lynch did. Indeed I remember some funny feelings when watching The Twin Peaks TV-series, not knowing if I should laugh or be spooked. I think that he was not fully successful but manages to produce a semi-original combination of the sub-genres Found Footage and (spoiler, highlight to read) Home Invasion. A couple of scenes are to be remembered but the movie exhibits several defects (the kids have no phone signal in the farm but high-speed Internet!?) and the ending is too quickly expedited for my taste. A nice little movie anyway, but in a similar style I prefer the work of Ti West (The Innkeepers, The Testament).
Rating: 5 /10