Title: The Visit
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins

What It Is: When a mother (Kathryn Hahn) sends her teenage daughter Becca (DeJonge) and younger son Tyler (Oxenbould) to visit their estranged grandparents there’s no real guess as to why they are estranged. When the children arrive at their grandparents all is not exactly what it seems as they are a bit strange. In particular grandma (Deanna Dunagan) starts to get a little weird when the sun goes down. As stuff gets weirder the two children start to wonder what the hell is wrong with their nana and peepaw.

What We Think: This is a new “twist” on the Shymalan story. After a series of unfortunate events that is the last ten years of films for him this one is pretty good! He understand the need to build tension, as well as the positive effects of atmosphere. Both of the children and never annoying, but for sure Becca’s dialogue seems a tad mature for her 15 years of age. Tyler (who thinks he’s a rapper) can’t even annoy with the terrible bars he “drops”. In fact it has the opposite reaction, at least for me it did.

Our Grade: B-, I’m not saying Shymalan is back, not yet, but this is a good start! I think working with producer Jason Blum (Blumhouse) keeps the budgets for his films down (as it did here) which allows for more box office success. The Visit cost just 5 million to make and has to date (September 30th) made around 50 million dollars. I’m going to recommend everyone check it out, even my readers that don’t like horror movies will probably enjoy this flick. Well done Mr. Shymalan, great to see you make a decent flick can’t wait to see your next one.