The Visit is a 2015 American found footage horror film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, and Kathryn Hahn.
The film was released in North America on September 11, 2015 by Universal Pictures. The film received overall mixed to positive reviews, and some viewed it as a comeback for Shyamalan. It was a box office success, grossing $98.5 million worldwide against its $5 million budget.
Video The Visit (2015 American film)
Plot
Two siblings from Philadelphia, 15-year-old Becca and 13-year-old Tyler, prepare for a five-day visit with their grandparents while their divorced mother Loretta goes on a cruise with her boyfriend. Loretta reveals that she has not spoken to her parents in 15 years after marrying her high school teacher, of whom her parents disapproved. The teens have never met their grandparents. They intend to record a documentary film about their visit using a camcorder.
Becca and Tyler meet their grandparents at a train station. Becca refers to them as "Nana" and "Pop Pop". When they arrive at their isolated farmhouse, Becca and Tyler are instructed to never go into the basement because it contains toxic mold, and that bedtime is at 9:30 every evening, after which they shouldn't leave their room. The first night, an hour past curfew, Becca ventures downstairs for something to eat and sees Nana projectile vomiting all over the house, which frightens her. She tells Pop Pop, who dismisses it as Nana having the stomach flu. He then reminds her not to leave their bedroom after 9:30 pm.
Over the next few days, Becca and Tyler notice their grandparents exhibiting more strange and disturbing behavior. Tyler walks into Pop Pop's shed and finds a huge pile of feces. Becca asks Nana about the day Loretta left home, and Nana begins to shake and scream. Later Pop Pop and Nana are confronted by a woman they helped in counseling, and she goes into the backyard with them but is never seen leaving it; it's implied that they murdered her and left her body hanging from a tree. Concerned about the events, Tyler decides to secretly film what happens downstairs at night, but Nana discovers the hidden camera, retrieves a large knife, and tries unsuccessfully to break into the children's locked bedroom.
When Becca and Tyler view the camera footage of Nana with the knife, they contact Loretta and beg her to come get them. They show her images of her parents, and she panics and says they're not her parents. Realizing that they've been with strangers all week, the kids try to leave the house, but the older couple trap them inside and force them to play Yahtzee. Later, Becca sneaks into the basement and finds the corpses of the real grandparents, along with uniforms from the mental hospital at which they worked: The impostors are escaped patients who broke into the grandparents' home, murdered them with a hammer, and placed them in the basement with pictures of the real grandparents to avoid being recognized. Pop Pop grabs Becca and imprisons her in his bedroom with Nana, who tries to eat her. He then starts to torment Tyler psychologically by smearing his face with his dirty diaper. Becca fatally stabs Nana with a glass shard from a broken mirror, then runs into the kitchen and attacks Pop Pop. As Pop Pop starts to gain the upper hand, enraged Tyler knocks Pop Pop to the floor and kills him by repeatedly slamming the refrigerator door onto his head. The teens escape outside unharmed where they are met by their mother and police officers.
In the aftermath, Becca asks Loretta about what happened the day she left home. Loretta states that she had a major argument with her parents, during which she hit her mother and was then struck by her father. Loretta left home and ignored their attempts to contact her. Loretta concludes that reconciliation was always possible had she wanted it. She tells Becca not to hold on to anger over her father's abandonment.
In a post-credit scene, Tyler performs a freestyle rap recounting the events of their visit.
Maps The Visit (2015 American film)
Cast
- Olivia DeJonge as Becca Jamison
- Ed Oxenbould as Tyler Jamison
- Deanna Dunagan as Maria Bella Jamison (Claire), also known as "Nana"
- Peter McRobbie as Frederick Spencer Jamison (Mitchell), also known as "Pop Pop"
- Kathryn Hahn as Loretta Jamison, Becca and Tyler's mother
- Celia Keenan-Bolger as Stacey
- Benjamin Kanes as Corin, Becca and Tyler's father
Production
Filming began on February 19, 2014, under the preliminary title Sundowning. Sundowning is the increased restlessness and confusion of some dementia patients during the afternoon and evening. M. Night Shyamalan's Blinding Edge Pictures was the production company, with Shyamalan and Marc Bienstock producing, and Steven Schneider and Ashwin Rajan as executive producers. Later on, producer Jason Blum and his company Blumhouse Productions were included in the credits. Although thousands of American children were auditioned for the film's two lead roles of Becca and Tyler, in what Shyamalan later characterized as a "total fluke", he eventually selected a pair of relatively unknown Australian juvenile actors, Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould, to portray the film's dual Philadelphia-native teenage protagonists.
Shyamalan admitted that he had trouble keeping the tone for the film consistent during the editing phase, telling Bloody Disgusting that the first cut of the film resembled an art house film more than a horror film. A second cut went in the opposite direction and the film became a comedy. He eventually struck a middle balance and cut the film as a thriller, which, according to him, helped tie the different elements together as they "could stay in service of the movie".
Music
There is no film score for most of the film, as is common for found footage films. Paul Cantelon is credited for "epilogue theme". A few songs are heard during the film.
Release
Universal began The Visit's theatrical wide release in the United States on September 11, 2015. On April 17, 2015, the first official trailer was released to theaters, attached to the film Unfriended, and it was released online later that week. The film premiered in the Republic of Ireland on August 30, 2015, in a special screening that was attended by Shyamalan.
Home media
The Visit was released on Blu-ray and DVD on January 5, 2016.
Reception
Box office
The Visit grossed over $65.2 million in the United States and Canada and over $33.2 million in other territories for a worldwide total of over $98.4 million, against a budget of $5 million.
The film grossed $25.4 million in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office behind The Perfect Guy by just $460,000.
Critical response
The Visit received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently holds an approval rating of 65%, based on 211 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Visit provides horror fans with a satisfying blend of thrills and laughs - and also signals a welcome return-to-form for writer-director M. Night Shyamalan." On Metacritic the film has a score of 55 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.
Scott Mendelson from Forbes called Shyamalan's film a "deliciously creepy and funny little triumph". He also wrote, "The Visit is the one we've been waiting for, folks. It's good. Oh my word, is it good. But more importantly, it is excellent in that specific way that reminds us why M. Night Shyamalan was once such a marvel. It is richly humanistic, filled with individually sketched characters that often sparkle with wit and surprising decency." In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis described the film as "an amusingly-grim fairy tale". Shyamalan has gone back to basics, "with a stripped-down story and scale, a largely-unknown (excellent) cast and one of those classically-tinged tales of child peril that have reliably spooked audiences for generations". She, along with other critics, saw the film as a modern-day version of the classic fairytale Hansel and Gretel.
In his column for The Observer, Mark Kermode panned the film, saying it may be worse than Lady in the Water. He wrote, "Is it meant to be a horror film? Or a comedy? The publicity calls it 'an original thriller' but it is neither of those things. Only 'endurance test' adequately describes the ill-judged shenanigans that ensue." Mike McCahill gave the film one star (out of five) in his review for The Guardian, and said it was "[d]ull, derivative and flatly unscary."
Accolades
References
External links
- The Visit on IMDb
- The Visit at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Visit at Box Office Mojo
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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