Before I dig into the TIFF stuff, I
wanted to post about The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan's newest venture that
released this past weekend.
Two teens visiting their estranged
grandparents for the first time start witnessing weird occurrences
when the sun goes down.
Despite how terrible most people think
his last two blockbusters were, they still made money
overseas, so he's still a bankable asset to the bean counters. I say
that in case you were wondering how people still give him cash to
make movies after his last five (and one-third) efforts. Apparently
Shyamalan used his fee from After Earth to finance The Visit, so I do
have to admire his gumption in the face of popular opinion.
And good on him for doing so because
The Visit is actually pretty decent. Shyamalan has ditched the
overblown and convoluted plots and just kept things simple with four
characters together for a week on a farm. It became very clear to me
while watching this Shyamalan being intentionally funny is much more
enjoyable to watch than Shyamalan being unintentionally funny. And
there is a lot of comedy to be had here which creates a nice balance
with the more horrific elements.
Due to this being a more intimate
piece, the actors were the focus and I thought they were solid across
the board. The teenagers Becka (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed
Oxenbould), once I got my initial annoyance of them spewing dialogue
that no one their age would ever say, gave very natural performances
and worked well together as siblings.
The Visit has a nice build and I didn't
find the found footage format too distracting, as the pretense by which it was introduced was believable enough to justify its
existence. The movie was produced by Jason Blum (of Paranormal Activity,
Insidious et al) and I can see his influence in here, as well.
Shyamalan & Blum together create an interesting hybrid of the
modern and classical.
As you would expect, there was an
inevitable twist in The Visit and it was well crafted enough that I
only figured it out moments before the reveal. It had a cool campfire
story quality to it that I dug. I also appreciated that Shyamalan
kept himself (and his ego) out of this one, and though there is a
“swing away” moment at the climax, it was nowhere near as
preposterous as the one in Signs.
The Visit had a simple narrative and was well executed on both sides of the camera. I also feel this was a
sizable step toward the public image redemption of M. Night
Shayamalan.
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