Monday, September 14, 2015

MOVIE REVIEW - The Visit

M. Night Shyamalan has had some large successes over the years, and also some terrible failures. His latest attempt is really neither, and that's the problem.

The Visit is a supposedly scary movie that is not really. The audience today couldn't decide if it was silly, or serious.  There was some real laughter from the group at the screen, and I'm not convinced there was supposed to be.  This movie just lies there, and really takes you nowhere.  And pay no attention to all this "huge twist" stuff you've been hearing.  It's nothing you won't see coming.

The Visit is the story of a young single mother (Jessica Hahn) and her two kids.  She is estranged from her own mom and dad, and her two young kids have never met their grandparents. So, when mom decides to go on a cruise with her new boyfriend, she decides to send her kids to her parents house for a week so they can know each other.  Right there, it sounds pretty dumb.  Who would do that? Send her kids for a WEEK to someone you, yourself have not had any contact with at all in 15 years? Please!

So as the kids arrive, they find out that old Nana and Pappy are out of their collective minds, and have a sinister plan to kill the kids.   Now isn't this a lovely story - Granny and Gramps serial killers of their own grand kids.  Fact is, there is a plot twist that deals with this, but it doesn't work all that well.  This is simply silly, amazingly uninteresting at best.

Shyamalan has lost a whole lot of his touch from the early days. But being fair, you can't have The Sixth Sense, or Signs every time out, and that's what we expect from him, and we don't get it much anymore.  This is just a very forgettable movie, with cliche' performances, made on an adequate budget that simply goes nowhere. This is not scary, or suspenseful, but is mildly entertaining at times.

The Visit. A rental if your bored out of your gourd this fall.


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