{"id":79519,"date":"2015-09-11T09:22:21","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T08:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=79519"},"modified":"2015-09-11T09:22:21","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T08:22:21","slug":"the-visit-film-review-shyamalan-goes-back-to-basics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/the-visit-film-review-shyamalan-goes-back-to-basics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Visit film review: Shyamalan goes back to basics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0When you sit<\/span><span class=\"s2\"> down to watch an M Night Shyamalan film, it comes with the expectation of a twist. You may spend most of your viewing time trying to work out exactly where Shyamalan is headed and what the twist will be. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">So it comes as no surprise that there\u2019s one in this entertainingly bad comedy horror, which sees two teenagers leave the comfort of their city home and the warm arms of their loving single mother (Kathryn Hahn) to visit their estranged grandparents, who live on a remote farm. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">However, you may sit in perplexed shock at how cringe-inducing and awful it is. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Rebecca (Olivia DeJonge) is an aspiring filmmaker who is interested in finding out why her mother hasn\u2019t spoken to her parents in 15 years. So she arranges a trip to visit her grandparents, along with her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), and begins a documentary project about her family. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">When their grandparents start acting odd during their week-long visit, with \u2018Pops\u2019 advising them to never leave their room after 9.30pm, they start to investigate exactly why. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Shyamalan\u2019s script throws up ethical questions about documentary filmmaking, but basically he\u2019s just having a bit of a nag about the manipulation of subjects. And both of the kids spew dialogue that aspires to be full of the irony, energy and humour of Kevin Williamson\u2019s back catalogue of screenplays, but fails miserably. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">He also paints the age gap in broad strokes, with the tech-savvy Rebecca and rap-obsessed Tyler defining the youth of today. Granny suffers from dementia, and Pops is often confused and angry, which leaves the kids shaken, but then any good work on this topic is undone and made a mockery of, especially in the final throes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">The mystery surrounding their mother\u2019s estrangement is used as a device to keep you hooked while all the rest of the crap is flying around in the background, but even that ends up drawing a disappointingly tame conclusion. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\"><em><strong>The Visit<\/strong><\/em> is crass and predictable, and nearly as bad as the extremely dire <em><strong>The Happening<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is M Night Shyamalan back to his spooky best in low-budget horror The Visit?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":79521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[4456],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/The-Visit.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}