Shyamalan, the genius filmmaker, is back with a terrific film.
By Sujeet Rajan
Follow @ambazaarmag
NEW YORK: Great films are not really about a cheetah galloping for a few seconds to catch with a deadly pounce a stricken deer; it’s about watching, in a silent room, a lizard with infinitesimal patience creeping up to its prey on a wall, strategizing, timing its kill to perfection.
Great films are not about dandelions shedding in wind; it’s really that beautiful moment when after what seems like the wait of a lifetime, the petals of a rose unfurl, widening eyes and senses. Planting flowers, sprinkling seeds assume significantly more meaning.
M. Night Shayamalan’s ‘The Visit’ is a great film. A must watch film. It’s one of those rare films that three generations can watch together in a theater, laugh together at the plausibility of it all, feel thrilled and tizzy with the eeriness of what transpires, be shocked with the twist that emanates. The film draws an invisible, poignant line which demarcates how generations will feel differently about situations, to make it a fulfilling experience, for all.
Needless to say that after some terrible films he has made in recent years – ‘Lady in the Water’, ‘The Happening’, ‘After Earth’ and ‘The Last Airbender’ – ‘The Visit’, written and directed by Shyamalan, and set in rural Pennsylvania like most of his other films, marks the return of a genius filmmaker, who gave the masses cult films ‘The Sixth Sense’, ‘Unbreakable’ and ‘Signs.’
Shyamalan is also back in his elements, at the top of his game, working with young actors, to flesh out startlingly original, riveting performances. Except in ‘The Visit’, he also gets two elderly actors to give indelible performance of their careers.
‘The Visit’ is seen mostly through found footage by two siblings, 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and 13-year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), who spend a week at their maternal grandparents’ house in rural Pennsylvania, ‘Nana (played by Deanna Dunagan) and ‘Pop Pop’ (played by Peter McRobbie). The siblings have never met the grandparents. They go there on their own taking a train trip, at the behest of their mother (Kathryn Hahn), who had left house at the age of 19 against her parents’ wishes, to marry a man frowned upon by them.
The day she left with the man whom she loved, something also happened to make reconciliation difficult with her parents. After many years, her parents, however, find her through social media, implore her that they want to see their grandchildren.
Exactly what happened all those years ago to completely alienate their mother from her parents, is what prompts the siblings to document their adventure, with two video cameras. They also trace their mother’s early life.
At the root of it all, through their narrative documentary, they hope to bring some succor and happiness back into their mother’s life, who has struggled with emotional issues after her husband and the father of her two children, left her for another woman. She is dating a man now, goes on a cruise with him, as her children embark on their trip to the grandparents’ house. Mother and kids keep in touch through Skype.
Shyamalan cleverly juxtaposes real life issues afflicting the old – in this case it’s dementia through a medical condition known as sundowning, where sunlight and moonlight has an adverse affect on behavior that Nana suffers from, and she behaves abnormally – to the imminent threat and peril the children face, as the noose of danger slowly dangles closer to them.
The strange behavior is not just confined to Nana, who seems on the verge of dangerous mania at times. Pop Pop too seems afflicted with abnormality, as he confides to the teens, that he was fired from his job after watching a strange white thing, which nobody believed. After he was fired from his job, everybody stopped talking to him. He has a penchant for disappearing into a shed, where he keeps a gun; also something smells bad in there. He is also incontinent, the full implication of which does come about eventually in the film, to the horror of all.
Though Shyamalan desisted from using an original soundtrack for the film, the POV shots from the young auteurs combined with the real life sounds of scramble, squeaks and squeals, are enough to create adequate atmosphere for a thriller.
Suffused with all this, and laced throughout is subtle humor that keeps the tension from getting overly inflated. It’s a tightrope walk for the director to not deflate expectations, and avoid the danger of a pinprick on the growing narrative balloon of the film. Shyamalan does an excellent job of keeping imminent horror afloat, head above water at all times.
As the days go by for the teens, they get increasingly puzzled. They realize some strange happenings are afoot at their grandparents’ house. The week cannot get over too soon. What secrets are the grandparents hiding? Phones don’t work, communication with their mother is in jeopardy. The teens want to escape. But can they?
‘The Visit’ throws some complex human issues too into perspective – never really explored in any great depth or length, but enough for it to sink in nevertheless.
There are issues like what the loss of a child who leaves home suddenly can do to ageing parents – what loneliness really means; the slow degradation brought upon by dementia; the devastating effect of divorce on children, and how they take it hard, lose self-esteem; marital woes that lead to psychological trauma; vulnerability to life itself. Art and its boundaries. Life and its quixotic puzzles. The realization for all that the strange and macabre can indeed happen at a moment’s notice.
Verdict: ‘The Visit’ deserves a visit to the theater to watch it.
(Sujeet Rajan is Editor-in-Chief, The American Bazaar)