Review: The Visit

I was meaning to write this as soon as I watched this, the best M. Night Shyamalan film I have seen to date. He brought us great films like 'The Sixth Sense', 'The Village' and terrible films like 'The Last Airbender'. This film follows kids Becca and Tyler who go on a trip to visit their estranged grandparents. Their mother ran away from home many years ago and refused to make amends with them, however one day the grandparents request to meet their grandkids. So while the mum and her boyfriend go on a cruise the kids go to visit the farm.

It was a great start showing single mother explaining bits of her past to her children and not being able to come to terms with her childhood at the farm and struggling to talk about it. However Becca decides she wants to go in order to restore her mothers severed relationship with her grandma and pop pop. Armed with a camcorder the two kids happily travel into the stix where there is barely any internet or life.

Not being to keen on amateur filming this film however revealed lots of errie atmosphere where scenes worked out perfect from the kids perspective rather than the normal view - hiding the reality. The grandparents really have their quirks whether it be grandmas's senile ramblings, and odd requests fror Becca to get into the oven to clean it or pop pop always going into the mysterious shed out back.

One of my favourite scenes is when the kids decide to crawl under the house and play almost hide and seek but grandma appears and chases them out. This reminded me of scenes from the game Project Zero, crawling in close confinement and being unable to escape. When the kids mention this on skype to their mum she exclaims this is how she used to play as a child, passing it off as 'normal behavior'. With the mother condoning all the bizarre behavior I began to feel uneasy about the whole arrangement as Tyler does.

One of the rules of the house was never to leave your room after 9.30 as strange things occurring, noises, screams, scratching. Tyler encounters what looks like naked Grandmama crawling on the floor. Things don't add up and Becca reluctantly films the occurrences in the night and eventually gives in to Tyler's notion that something isn't quite right with their grandparents.

It is the day before they are to return home that Becca tells her mum to come pick them up early as something isn't right and puts the web cam on the grandparents standing outside, mum drops the bombshell of 'That''s not my parents." Yes they have been living in a house with two complete strangers lying about everything. This also explains the lack of photos and grandma trying to break the web cam. This has alarmed the kids and they pretend that nothing is wrong and try riding it out till mum comes to their rescue.

This film has some shocking scenes and a real plot twist and I urge you to watch the film for it's black comedy. Shyamalan has produced and written a well though out story and witty script for the children who steal the show. Also great baking is displayed and made me wanna eat cake till i bloated into Fat Princess. Recommended for people who appreciated 'Drag me to Hell'.

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Aisha Anime ^_^