This eerie, mysterious and terrifying movie depicts two brothers while vacationing at a house along with their grandparents. 15-year-old Rebecca 'Becca' (Olivia DeJonge), and her 13-year-old brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), travel to a remote Pennsylvania farm to spend a week with their maternal grandparents, whom they don't know. Their mother Paula (Kathryn Hahn) stays behind because of her dark past with her parents. After a few nights the kids find out their grandparents, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) have a dark, deadly secret. Along the way, Becca intends to collect all the experiences in a documentary. No one loves you like your grandp-arents. Grandma's Rules: 1. Have a great time. 2. Eat as much as you want. 3. Don't ever leave your room after 9:30 pm.
This is a horror thriller with touches of black humor, told through the images recorded by the protagonists. It is a contemporary rereading of the story of Hansel and Gretel. It is a return to M. Night Shyamalan's early films, shot with a very tight budget and a much more artisanal production than his immediately previous works. A disturbing staging and good editing immerse an essentially malicious atmosphere and well written for the screen by director M. Night Shyamalan himself . M. Night toys with strange ideas, but at times, he buries them under an illogical and rather predictable tale. The film itself benefits from the chemistry displayed by the two brothers, Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, they are quite sympathetic even though they find themselves entangled in a terrifying situation. This the tale of an isolated house in which two brothers arrive and they meet their offbeat grandparents resulting in bizarre events until a revelatory twist at the end. Through the interaction of a few roles, the filmmaker manages to awaken great tension caused by the isolation in the middle of the field and a very strange house with sinister secrets.
The motion picture was professionally written/produced/directed by Night M. Shyamalan, though being slow-moving and some claustrophobic due to be mostly staged at the house. Competently made by Night Shyamalan, many of his films involve pivotal roles with extraordinary abilities or events happening to them and with children always having family problems. Many of his films focusing on everyday terror, prophecy, security, self-preservation, frightening to unknown and natural disasters, where nature becomes something fantastic, overwhelming, almost supernatural. Night Shyamalan is an expert on fantastic and mysterous films with plenty of intelligence and thought-provoking issues as proved in : ¨Signs¨ , ¨The village¨ , ¨Lady in water¨ , ¨The Incident¨ , ¨The sixth sense¨, ¨Old¨ with exception for an extreme flop as critical as boxoffice: ¨Airbender¨. Shyalaman usually shoots in Philadelphia, this is Shyamalan favorite location. Night is an avid comic books fan, which he made the fabulous trylogy: "Unbreakable" , ¨Multiple¨and "Glass" starred by Bruce Willis , Samuel L Jackson and James McAvoy. And his last film ¨Knock at the Cabin¨ (2023) that can be depicted as a story about human beings struggling against the overwhelming power of the Apocalypse. Rating The Visit (2015) : 6/10 . Well worth watching for Night Shyamalan. Acceptable , but neither outstanding, nor notable, but simply decent.
