The Visit – Visitation rights revoked

I’ll pretty much watch any old horror film.  It’s a definite fault in mine.  So I sat down to watch ‘The Visit’ based on the fact that it was new and looked a bit spooky, judging by the front cover (yes, I do know the old saying about never judging a book by its cover, but I still do!).  Now, apart from knowing that it was a horror movie, I learned two other majorly important facts in the opening couple of scenes.  The first of which that it was partly made by M Night Shyamalan and, if you don’t know, made those classic films ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘Unbreakable’ around the year 2000.  And, since then, his film-making record has been a little patchy (to put it politely!).  Secondly, this is a ‘found footage’ film.  And, if you don’t know what that is then you obviously don’t watch enough modern horror.

‘The Visit’ is about a couple of kids who go to meet their grandparents for the first time (you’ll soon find out why they’ve only just discovered their relatives during their early teenage years, but, ultimately, exposition doesn’t matter much).  And this is where the ‘found footage’ element comes in, for the teenage girl feels the need to document the whole experience on her camera, hence the following ninety minutes are relayed entirely through the – shaky – camerawork of a teenage girl.  Again, there’s a minimal explanation as to why she should feel the need to do this, but, rest assured, as annoying as this would be in real life, no one in the film seems bothered about being filmed a hundred per cent of the time.  So, they meet their grandparents… and strange things start to happen.

Sadly, strange (or rather/interesting/horrific) things don’t happen quick enough.  If ever a film seemed to drag out its first half then it was here.  Yes, I know that it’s a little cheap to jump right into a massive bloodbath in the opening scene and a slow burner like this is supposed to build tension and get to know the characters.  Yet, the two kids are just not that interesting and you can see the ‘threat’ coming a mile off.  By the time anything remotely interesting happens the film is practically over and you’ve been checking out Facebook on your smartphone a dozen times while this film has been slowly cranking itself up.

Ultimately, it’s just yet another run-of-the-mill horror films which clutter up the pool of a thousand other recent found footage films out there.  Once again, M. Night Shyamalan does nothing to recapture his former greatness and, although I believe he still has another decent movie or two in him somewhere, this goes no way to prove that.  Avoid.  You’ll have seen better and, if you haven’t – again – you obviously don’t watch enough horror.

4/10 You can watch this film while you're doing the ironing (you'll still get the general gist of it)