As someone rapidly approaching senior citizen status, I get why old people are perceived as weird and scary.
The aging mind is undependable, and at times downright incomprehensible. With life expectancy continuing to rise, the question becomes: What do we do with all these crazy old coots?
It’s clearly something that occupies the mind of speculative filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, as he addresses the issue in The Visit, as well as in Old (2021). Let’s call it Golden Age Anxiety.
Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her rap-happy kid brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are spending a week with their grandparents on the family farm.
So far, so good.
Mom (Katherine Hahn) has been estranged from her conservative parents for many years, so the teen travelers have never actually met Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), and have no idea what’s in store for them.
An aspiring documentarian, Becca brings along a couple of cameras to commemorate the reconciliation of a fractured family, and provide the found footage foundation of Shyamalan’s feature.
Suffice to say that The Visit doesn’t go as planned. As Becca and Tyler try their best to get better acquainted with the kinfolk, the latter just keep turning up the freaky to a point that becomes impossible to ignore.
They are given a 9:30 curfew, and instructed to stay in their rooms, lest they witness Nana screaming and vomiting in the nude, or Pop Pop taking another trip out to his locked shed.
Being inquisitive kids, Becca and Tyler investigate further, discussing their discoveries with Mom over Skype, rightfully concluding that something is strangely amiss.
As the cuckoo grandparents, Peter McRobbie and Deanna Dunagan are captivating, both in terms of their gamut of lunacy, and increasingly failing attempts to conceal the craziness.
Often funny, a little sweet, and madly unpredictable, The Visit culminates in a 100 percent slasher movie ending, that should feed those hungry for mayhem after numerous attempts at domestic bonding.
Not the most creative solution, but a satisfying one.
Shyamalan doesn’t always hit what he’s aiming for, but he capitalizes on the singular terror experienced by kids upon meeting batshit relations for the first time—and realizing that they’re trapped with them.
Recommended.
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