Howdy there, Scream Freaks! You know, we can still remember our first time watching “The Sixth Sense.” What we expected to be a simple story about a kid scared out of his mind from seeing dead people became a surprise hit with an unexpected twist ending involving the fate of the kid’s supportive psychologist played by Bruce Willis. Over night, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan became a name synonymous with suspense horror. And twists . . . which we still wonder if that was his decision to keep doing twists in his movies or the studios? We mean, the twist was unexpected in “The Sixth Sense” so it really hit home upon the first viewing. But when the twist becomes your trademark, is it really working anymore? It’s hard to continue surprising people when they’re already expecting it like the ending of a Goosebumps book trying to guess what it is halfway through the movie.
But whether the studios pressured M. Night to keep it up, or he just thought twists almost every movie was the way to go, a lot of his work were hits and misses after “The Sixth Sense” put him on the map. Far from a one hit wonder, he never quite captured that same suspense or shock of a twist since “The Sixth Sense.” That is, until the release of his newest movie, “The Visit.”
You may have seen the commercials of the grandchildren visiting their oddball grandparents for the first time, rolled your eyes, and muttered, “Oh, the grandparents are evil, blah!” We’re guilty of this as well, but we’ve seen every M. Night film in theaters so why stop now? Expecting a descent movie in the least, we were floored out how M. Night successfully reached back to his “Sixth Sense” roots and gave us a memorable story we’re still talking about today. A mother who ran away from home at a young age is contacted by her parents who want nothing more than to see their 2 grandchildren for the first time. Unsupervised, the excited children are sent out of town to stay with their grandparents for a week, and record the whole experience on cameras that gives the film a found footage point of view. The children are happy to visit with their grandparents at first, but strange behaviors slowly manifests from the elderly couple that make the children nervous. Fear for their safety escalates by the end of their visit, and time is running out to learn the secret of the grandparents before its too late.
“The Visit” should get high recognition for its casting. The kids are just the right balance of fun and annoying like real children their age, and the senior actors playing the grandparents really put it all out there (the grandmother’s bare wrinkly ass is seen more than once). The story properly sets up past troubles that motivate the protagonist’s actions throughout the film to a satisfactory ending, and the scares are simple but effective as proven by the theater crowd around us during our viewing. No gore, no CGI, no demeaning acts of inhumanity, none of that! Just the image of the woman running through the house or clawing at a door was enough to make the crowds shout and scream at the screen. It works on the most basic level, but it works.
The twist in “The Visit” is the best! M. Night actually does a great job subtly poking fun at the plots and twists in his past movies. The mystery behind the grandparents’ behavior really covers the board from the paranormal and supernatural to alien invasions. It leaves you guessing to the very end, and then when you least expect it, POW! The twist comes and your mouth drops at how simple it is but satisfying all at the same time.
This is a true testament to how basic fear is, and how little it can take to really captivate an audience when done so flawlessly as “The Visit.” We highly recommend checking out “The Visit” as soon as you can. But what do we know? We like killer tomato movies!
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I’ll see you later Scream Freaks!
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