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Night Shyamalan Comment By Ed Symkus More Content Now MailTribune.com By Ed Symkus More Content Now Posted Sep. 11, 2015 at 12:01 AM By Ed Symkus More Content Now Posted Sep. 11, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News Although there are plenty of strange noises, accompanied by really creepy events during its evening hours, this is no typical things-that-go-bump-in-the-night movie. It’s a down-and-dirty, shock-filled but relatively bloodless psychological horror film. Neither is “The Visit” what we’ve unhappily come to expect from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, who started strong with “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable,” but has since been on a downhill slide with disjointed and disappointing films including “The Village” and “The Happening.” This time he’s gone the barebones horror route, sticking a couple of innocents (a teenage girl and her younger brother) in a situation that starts off kind of strange, turns really weird, then dangerous, and has the audience as worried as the characters are. This time, he’s made a good movie. Done is faux documentary style, the story tells of Becca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) – she’s a budding documentarian, with video cameras in hand; he’s a wannabe rapper – who are heading off to an “isolated farm” in Pennsylvania to meet their single mom’s parents for the first time. Mom (Kathryn Hahn) dropped her folks like hot potatoes when she was a teen, and never looked back. So while she goes on a cruise with her boyfriend, the kids look forward to a week with Nana and Pop Pop (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie), folks they’d only heard about till now. The kids get along well, Mom is thrilled to go on holiday, and the grandparents, having long ago given up on a relationship with their daughter, are delighted to have the special company. And they want them to stay healthy, so Pop Pop makes sure to casually mention that there’s mold in the basement, and they shouldn’t go down there. OK, so that would be red flag number one, and, oh yeah, there are a lot more lined up. As Becca goes about filming everything she sees, and bringing Tyler on to do some camera work, she instructs him that “we’re looking for visual tension,” along with other claptrap cinematic terms. She gets a nice dose of that on their first night when, after their grandparents go to bed early, Nana is seen roaming around in the dark, making strange sounds, and vomiting in the living room. What the heck? All is better the next morning when, kids being kids, Becca and Tyler play games and shoot footage in some crawl space under the house, and are joined, without warning, by a third party who, from afar looks like Nana, but is moving awfully fast for an older woman. That red flag is bigger and darker … and scarier. Stuff happening in the daytime here is off-putting, but it’s about an hour after Nana and Pop Pop’s regular 9:30 bedtime each night, that noises you don’t want to hear and sights behind nervously opened doors that you don’t want to see arise. There’s something definitely wrong about these two folks, and though the kids are picking up bad vibes, Becca keeps attempting to explain away their odd behavior, while Tyler can’t come to grips with it. When he sees some concern on their faces, Pop Pop comes up with some more good advice for them: “Maybe you two shouldn’t come out of your room after 9:30 at night.” Don’t you wish that protagonists in horror films would listen once in awhile? Don’t you wish that these two kids would leave their luggage behind and just skedaddle? Worse, why doesn’t Becca catch on that Nana, after agreeing to be interviewed by her on camera, really does not want to talk about why their mom left home all those years ago? If there’s anything that Shyamalan is a master at, it’s the art of the plot twist, and he’s got a doozy here, one that will induce a numbing shiver in anyone watching. And it’s followed, in short order, by everyone and everything – including a trip to that “moldy basement” – in the film coming unhinged. In this case, that’s a good thing. THE VISIT Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan With Oliva DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn Rated PG-13 Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now. By Ed Symkus More Content Now MailTribune.com By Ed Symkus More Content Now Posted Sep. 11, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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