THE VISIT

After a string of critical and commercial flops, M. Night Shyamalan takes his bruised ego on the road to Damascus, and the troubled filmmaker finally allows us to laugh with him instead of at him. A trip to their grandparents’ remote farm gets progressively weirder for Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and (seriously) rappin’ T-Diamond Stylus (Ed Oxenbould) when granny starts projectile vomiting and wandering around in the buff with a kitchen knife. Old people… What would you do with them? Most of the scares are well signposted, and the found-footage device is an entirely unnecessary handicap. The two young leads are so annoying that you might find yourself willing Nana (Deanna Dungan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) to just hurry up and eat the little blighters. Shyamalan can’t resist one of his trademark twists, but the payoff is more campfire urban myth than masterstroke. Nevertheless, The Visit is a modest, satisfying low-budget horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously.