The Visit Review (2015)

The Visit

  After murdering The Last Airbender series and making Will Smith look like an idiot in After Earth, M. Night Shyamalan is back and just as terrible as ever. In his latest project, we have two kids who are visiting their "creepy" grandparents for the first time. I put creepy in quotations because, as hard as it tries, this movie isn't very scary at all. All of the jump scares are predictable, none the characters are intimidating. It's a lot of stuff we've seen before and honestly, it got boring pretty quickly. 

  As for any good coming from this movie, Shyamalan seemed a little more self aware then usual, cracking some occasional jokes and not taking himself too seriously. I'm not sure if I liked this aspect or not, because sometimes it seemed to mess a bit with the tone. I wish the entire movie was strictly comedy because the moments where Shyamalan was trying to be sentimental came off super annoying and pretentious.

  I've found that in every M. Night Shyamalan movie, there is always one actor/character that makes the movie watchable. In Signs it was Joaquin Phoenix. In Lady In The Water it was Paul Giamatti. In The Village it was Bryce Dallas Howard. In The Visit, it's new comer Ed Oxenbould. This kid was the heart of the film and without him it would have just been flat out awful. He was amusing, good at delivering even the stupidest lines, and was really the only character I cared about. Aside from that, I don't have much good to say about The Visit. If M. Night Shyamalan never made another movie, I think I'd be okay. 2 out of 10 (Skip It)