“Honky Grandma Be Trippin'” could be another name for this movie, which should be M. Night Shyamalan‘s return to form. Except that it’s not going to be. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is what it is. It’s a fact. The filmmaker who in the past gave us such chilling features as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs is not going for the same seriousness of his early work here. The first trailer for The Visit seems more like a Joe Dante movie once you realize that the level of goofiness is intentional. If you watch it expecting a scary movie, especially given that it’s produced by Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity; Insidious; Sinister; Oculus; The Purge; Whiplash), then it’s going to come across as a silly mess.
Even with the expectation of humor, though, I don’t think The Visit actually looks good. Kathryn Hahn is there, and I’ll watch her in just about anything, but she doesn’t seem to be in a lot of the movie. She plays the single mother of two kids (Ed Oxenbould and Olivia DeJonge), who go off to stay with their nana and pop pop (Deanna Dunagan and Daredevil‘s Peter McRobbie). That can be a nightmare for many a child (my grandparents would make us weed and dig ditches and eat things we hated), but Shyamalan takes it further. This poor elderly couple has what could be a very bad case of dementia or another serious mental illness. But this is a horror movie, so I guess they’re probably monsters or aliens.
Please, just don’t let the twist be that they actually do have dementia. That would be a terrible gag. And don’t let the twist be that the grandparents are just screwing with the kids, because that would be just plain wrong. Of the grandparents, anyway.
The Visit arrives in theaters on September 11th.
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