M. Night Shyamalan is an enigma of a director. His first huge break was The Sixth Sense, a small movie that wound up garnishing an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Not only was it a great film, but it had quite possibly the best twist ending a movie ever had. So, his follow up was highly anticipated. He shows up with Unbreakable... not exactly a horror film which surprised most folks, but it was still a very good movie. It took slack because it wasn't as good as his previous film. How could it at that point? But, he made the mistake of adding a "twist ending". He started becoming known as the "twist ending" guy. And why not? They were clever. If he was good at it, he should be known for it. Then came Signs, which I would argue is his best film and is still a terrifying film to this day. It's not just his best film, but one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. Yes, the aliens look stupidly CGI, but that wasn't the point of the film Thank back to the leg in cornfield, the alien walking by the home video, the hand coming out from the pantry, and the ENTIRE end scene where the family is locked in the basement with aliens running rampant through the house and trying to get in. There was no twist, however, in Signs, and I believe that confused people. However, M. Night Shyamalan already had a great track record and filmography under his belt. Then... something awful happened. He made The Village. I could not have been more excited for a horror movie. It's M. Night back for summer, it's mysterious creatures in the woods that have a treaty with this little town, but the treaty has broken and they're coming! Holy shit that sounds great. Well, for one, the marketing doomed the movie from the start by misleading the audience of the plot. Two, there were two twists in the film-- the first one was that there were no beasts in the woods and that one comes FORTY MINUTES INTO THE MOVIE. FORTY! So, everything we are waiting to be afraid of is taken away and we have to sit back and watch some blind chick wander around the woods KNOWING she won't be harmed??? The second twist is that they weren't living in olden times, it's current times and they're all weird as shit. That twist was--- WHO CARES??? You don't need a twist for the sake of a twist, M. Night. If it's not organic, don't force it. I hated The Village so much, but it didn't make me give up on M. Night. All directors have a bad movie, this was his.
Then, came Lady In The Water, which wasn't horrible, but it wasn't M. Night. It was a strange little movie that was visually kinda okay, but just didn't really work. Then, came The Happening. One of the most awful "horror" films I've ever seen. Nothing scary about it, a waste of great acting, a twist worse than anything else that could've been written. This was the film that suggested M. Night might be done. He's alienated his audience now as many times as he's pleased them. He gets one more shot. So, he decides to go with The Last Airbender and After. Earth. Yeah, he's done. There's no way he's able to make a good movie again and if he does... how does anyone trust him enough to spend money to see it? How does a studio trust him enough to put his name on something? Well, it's happened. M. Night Shyamalan has defied the odds and been able to release a horror film for Universal called The Visit. If you think his other films were his "last chance" films... this one is seriously his last chance. This is the film that if he failed, people would swear off the name and he'd never get another movie deal again. And, fortunately for him... he didn't blow it.
The Visit is a welcome return to form for Shyamalan. Though, he's about two years too late with the "found footage" genre of horror (for the love of God please can this fad die??) but he returns with a story that proves to us the dude still knows what he's doing and can still write. We have fifteen year old Becca and thirteen year old Tyler going to visit their grandparents for the first time ever. When their mother was eighteen there was a huge argument over the man she wanted to marry, she left home and never spoke to them again. They found her on the internet and asked if they could at least meet their grandchildren. So, mom sends off the kids to meet the them while she takes a relaxing cruise away. Becca, a budding filmmaker, decides in order to help her mother come to terms with the biggest mistake she's ever made, she'll film the experience, get interviews with her grandparents and try to get resolution to a fifteen year silence. As far as reasons to go the found footage route with a film, this one isn't half bad and it's definitely not lazy. The kids are there for a week, but even after the first night things with the grandparents don't seem right. They're told not to leave the room after 9:30, but hear noises and scratching and goings on outside the bedroom. The grandmother crawls around the floor at night, the grandfather consistently hides things in the shed and dresses in a tuxedo for an occasion that doesn't exist. Is there something sinister going on at grandma's... or are they just crazy old people? To be honest, it's a strange set up that really only a capable director would be able to handle. Thank God M. Night has proven, once again, he's capable.
What's nice about the film is that it's not just a typical found footage horror film. It's a comedy as well. Both kids, but Tyler especially garnish a lot of laughs that ease the tension of the rest of the film. Again, a weaker writer/director would have a hard time balancing horror and comedy tending to favor one over the other and appearing disjointed, but the comedy and horror in The Visit is well mixed and maintained. What I had forgotten about M. Night that was a delight to be reminded of, is that he isn't just a scare you and make you jump as many times as he can writer/director. He's very methodical, he's very meticulous, and he takes his time building up to the scares. He also takes great care to develop his characters (something not often seen in horror films) and his films take a little bit of extra time getting to the scares because he's not done painting fully developed and complex characters. Even in The Village, the scares were gone and the twists were painfully bad, but the characters still had a significant amount of depth to them. This is especially the case in The Visit, just as it was in The Sixth Sense. He builds up the suspense, but he's giving us real characters with real issues that we do end up caring a lot about. They're not just stock voices behind a shaky video camera. And, what wound up being a nice surprise, is I can say confidently about 95% of the time there was an ACTUAL REASON for the camera to be on at that point. All of these found footage horror movies have that pivotal moment when the terror reaches its peak where you're taken out of the movie because there's no reason for the person to still be holding the camera. Almost all of The Visit has a reason to still be filmed. (Please God, after Paranormal 5, let the genre die!)
Okay, let's address the elephant in the room-- M. Night is "the twist" guy. Okay, yes, there is a "twist" in this film. I personally believe it is a clever twist... however, it's not exactly that hard to figure out... IF you're looking for it. I wasn't and was pleasantly surprised. If you're going in there with your metaphorical trenchcoat and magnifying glass trying as hard as you can to solve the mystery of the missing twist... yeah, you'll probably figure it out. But, you'll sacrifice the joy of just sitting back and watching a good old fashioned horror flick play out in front of you. And it is mostly a horror film. While it doesn't have a significant amount of "jump scares" (he has a few just to mess with you) it's the entire atmosphere of the movie that's haunting. Deanna Dunagan who plays Nana deserves an award for her performance. She's equal parts unintentionally hilarious and downright terrifying. It's also a film that sticks with you after it's over. It's one you have a long conversation about in the car ride home. It's one you wake up the next morning and you like it even more than you did when you walked out of the theater.
I truly believe that this is the comeback that M. Night was looking for and needed. As long as he can stay in the realm of writing really great characters in really great stories, then it won't be too difficult to return to the land of Shyamalan. But, he's still on thin ice. I mean, The Visit is no Sixth Sense and I wasn't expecting it to be... but it's also not The Village. I think most fans of a good old fashioned scary movie will be pleasantly surprised. Welcome back to the game M. Night... don't screw it up.
B
ADDITIONAL RANT: I probably should just make this a separate blog post, but people are here to read about reviews of movies not how I feel about etiquette in movie theaters in general. Let me give you good readers a bit of advice please. If you are going to the theater to pay money to watch a film in the comfort of stadium seating and a gigantic screen with crisp surround sound... SHUT UP. Don't talk. There is no reason to talk throughout a movie. With how expensive it is to see a movie nowadays, why ruin the experience with talking? ESPECIALLY HORROR MOVIES. The entire point of going to a scary movie is to hopefully get scared. To feel the emotion of terror, just like when seeing a comedic film and feeling and expressing the emotion of laughter. Horror movies NEED silence in order for the horror to happen, for the suspense to build. If you are a person who can't handle it and needs to talk it out loud and RUIN the experience for the people around you then you are of the worst moviegoers in the theaters. If you feel like you can't handle the tension so you need to laugh loudly... get out. Go see something funny. If you are a 350 pound black chick who just HAS to sit next to me and just perpetuate the stereotype that black people yell at the screen during movie theaters, I'm going to slit your throat with my Pibb straw. I paid my $12 to hopefully get scared, but mostly to hear what's happening on screen. I didn't pay to hear your gravy-clogged throat shout "oh hell naw" at the screen. You wouldn't do this in a comedy. You wouldn't do this in an action film. Why come to the theater and ruin the experience for everyone else around you. The problem with horror films is this-- they need to be seen in a theater where the screen is large, the sound is loud, and the room is dark. This is the perfect setup for a horror film. Scary movies at home can still work, but they lose a lot of the effectiveness. Yet, at home, you can ensure that no one talks. In a theater, chances are, if you're not seeing at 11:45 on a Tuesday, you're going to have the one asshole who can't keep her porky lips shut and ruins the movie for everyone. If you can't handle the film... don't buy the ticket to ruin it for everyone else. Thank you.
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