the visit 2015 netflix review

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M. Night Shyamalan had his heyday almost 20 years ago. He leapt out of the gate with such confidence he became a champion instantly. And then...something went awry. He became embarrassingly self-serious, his films drowning in pretension and strained allegories. His famous twists felt like a director attempting to re-create the triumph of " The Sixth Sense ," where the twist of the film was so successfully withheld from audiences that people went back to see the film again and again. But now, here comes " The Visit ," a film so purely entertaining that you almost forget how scary it is. With all its terror, "The Visit" is an extremely funny film. 

There are too many horror cliches to even list ("gotcha" scares, dark basements, frightened children, mysterious sounds at night, no cellphone reception), but the main cliche is that it is a "found footage" film, a style already wrung dry. But Shyamalan injects adrenaline into it, as well as a frank admission that, yes, it is a cliche, and yes, it is absurd that one would keep filming in moments of such terror, but he uses the main strength of found footage: we are trapped by the perspective of the person holding the camera. Withhold visual information, lull the audience into safety, then turn the camera, and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT? 

"The Visit" starts quietly, with Mom ( Kathryn Hahn ) talking to the camera about running away from home when she was 19: her parents disapproved of her boyfriend. She had two kids with this man who recently left them all for someone new. Mom has a brave demeanor, and funny, too, referring to her kids as "brats" but with mama-bear affection. Her parents cut ties with her, but now they have reached out  from their snowy isolated farm and want to know their grandchildren. Mom packs the two kids off on a train for a visit.

Shyamalan breaks up the found footage with still shots of snowy ranks of trees, blazing sunsets, sunrise falling on a stack of logs. There are gigantic blood-red chapter markers: "TUESDAY MORNING", etc. These choices launch us into the overblown operatic horror style while commenting on it at the same time. It ratchets up the dread.

Becca ( Olivia DeJonge ) and Tyler ( Ed Oxenbould ) want to make a film about their mother's lost childhood home, a place they know well from all of her stories. Becca has done her homework about film-making, and instructs her younger brother about "frames" and "mise-en-scène." Tyler, an appealing gregarious kid, keeps stealing the camera to film the inside of his mouth and his improvised raps. Becca sternly reminds him to focus. 

The kids are happy to meet their grandparents. They are worried about the effect their grandparents' rejection had on their mother (similar to Cole's worry about his mother's unfinished business with her own parent in "The Sixth Sense"). Becca uses a fairy-tale word to explain what she wants their film to do — it will be an "elixir" to bring home to Mom. 

Nana ( Deanna Dunagan ), at first glance, is a Grandma out of a storybook, with a grey bun, an apron, and muffins coming out of the oven every hour. Pop Pop ( Peter McRobbie ) is a taciturn farmer who reminds the kids constantly that he and Nana are "old." 

But almost immediately, things get crazy. What is Pop Pop doing out in the barn all the time? Why does Nana ask Becca to clean the oven, insisting that she crawl all the way in ? What are those weird sounds at night from outside their bedroom door? They have a couple of Skype calls with Mom, and she reassures them their grandparents are "weird" but they're also old, and old people are sometimes cranky, sometimes paranoid. 

As the weirdness intensifies, Becca and Tyler's film evolves from an origin-story documentary to a mystery-solving investigation. They sneak the camera into the barn, underneath the house, they place it on a cabinet in the living room overnight, hoping to get a glimpse of what happens downstairs after they go to bed. What they see is more than they (and we) bargained for.

Dunagan and McRobbie play their roles with a melodramatic relish, entering into the fairy-tale world of the film. And the kids are great, funny and distinct. Tyler informs his sister that he wants to stop swearing so much, and instead will say the names of female pop singers. The joke is one that never gets old. He falls, and screams, "Sarah McLachlan!" When terrified, he whispers to himself, " Katy Perry ... " Tyler, filming his sister, asks her why she never looks in the mirror. "Your sweater is on backwards." As he grills her, he zooms in on her, keeping her face off-center, blurry grey-trunked trees filling most of the screen. The blur is the mystery around them. Cinematographer Maryse Alberti creates the illusion that the film is being made by kids, but also avoids the nauseating hand-held stuff that dogs the found-footage style.

When the twist comes, and you knew it was coming because Shyamalan is the director, it legitimately shocks. Maybe not as much as "The Sixth Sense" twist, but it is damn close. (The audience I saw it with gasped and some people screamed in terror.) There are references to " Halloween ", "Psycho" (Nana in a rocking chair seen from behind), and, of course, " Paranormal Activity "; the kids have seen a lot of movies, understand the tropes and try to recreate them themselves. 

"The Visit" represents Shyamalan cutting loose, lightening up, reveling in the improvisational behavior of the kids, their jokes, their bickering, their closeness. Horror is very close to comedy. Screams of terror often dissolve into hysterical laughter, and he uses that emotional dovetail, its tension and catharsis, in almost every scene. The film is ridiculous  on so many levels, the story playing out like the most monstrous version of Hansel & Gretel imaginable, and in that context, "ridiculous" is the highest possible praise.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Visit (2015)

Rated PG-13 disturbing thematic material including terror, violence and some nudity, and for brief language

Kathryn Hahn as Mother

Ed Oxenbould as Tyler Jamison

Benjamin Kanes as Dad

Peter McRobbie as Pop-Pop

Olivia DeJonge as Rebecca Jamison

Deanna Dunagan as Nana

• M. Night Shyamalan

Cinematography

• Maryse Alberti
• Luke Franco Ciarrocch

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• Entertainment
• Movie Review

The Visit review: the most shocking M. Night Shyamalan twist is a good movie

• By Bryan Bishop
• on September 10, 2015 10:18 am

A decade ago it was impossible to discuss supernatural thrillers without invoking the name of M. Night Shyamalan. After exploding into the popular consciousness with The Sixth Sense , the writer-director staked his claim with carefully crafted follow-ups like Signs and Unbreakable , eventually leading Newsweek to dub him “The Next Spielberg.” But Shyamalan faltered soon thereafter, and by the time his sci-fi adaptation After Earth rolled around two years ago, his name was practically being hidden in studio marketing materials .

With irrelevancy lurking in the shadows, like one of his fictional boogeymen, the director needed to save his career. So Shyamalan switched things up — trying his hand at television with the quirky Wayward Pines , and leaving Hollywood behind altogether for his new movie The Visit . As the filmmaker told us in July , The Visit was a completely self-funded affair, with Shyamalan putting up the money so he could make a smaller film in relative secrecy without the interference of studios or outside influences. The result is the best snapshot we have of Shyamalan the filmmaker as he stands today.

Judging from the bonkers mix of horror and comedy that is The Visit , he may have gone totally insane — and that’s a wonderful thing.

The movie follows 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (a hilarious Ed Oxenbould). Their mother, played by Kathryn Hahn, is still suffering in the wake of her recent divorce, and to give everyone some space, the kids go off for a week to visit their grandparents for the very first time. Nana and Pop Pop (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) are warm, if not a bit quirky, at first, but as the visit stretches on, it becomes clear that something is very, very wrong.

Yes, The Visit is a found footage movie, and it’s the first clue that this is a break from the Shyamalan we’ve seen before. As a director, he built his career on meticulously crafted shots and camera moves that carried an almost mathematical precision, but that’s all thrown out the window here. Becca is an aspiring filmmaker, intent on documenting the visit for her mom, and as she enlists Tyler to help, the film takes on a chaotic visual energy that adds a layer of unease when contrasted with Shyamalan’s methodical pace. Where it differs from the Paranormal Activities of the world is that it’s actually beautiful at times; very often Shyamalan simply can’t help but find a gorgeous way to light a scene or evoke a mood, and it keeps the film fresh where the sub-genre has otherwise been pummeled into the ground and left for dead.

But visual technique is only worth so much, and what makes The Visit tick is the two young lead actors, who after a bumpy start settle into their self-conscious, found footage groove. DeJonge is grounded and believable as the older sister, her character endlessly precious and pretentious about her own filmmaking in what feels like Shyamalan having a laugh at himself for once. Oxenbould’s Tyler, on the other end, is the film’s comedic engine; a junior high suburbanite with hip-hop aspirations (he calls himself "T-Diamond Stylus") that deploys a comical adolescent bravado to cover up struggles with his parents’ separation.

Laughs and scares stack in a Jenga of oddball entertainment

That’s the other big surprise here: The Visit is actually funny , and not in a passing joke kind of way. It’s wild and outrageous, stacking laughs and scares atop one another in a giant Jenga of oddball entertainment. Contrasted with the overthought restraint of Shyamalan’s earlier work, The Visit is the Wild West; the kind of movie that uses a character’s unnerving penchant for skulking around nude as both a running joke and surprise scare, and that takes another’s obsessive tendencies and pays them off with a scatalogical gag that had me laughing and cringing in equal measure. It doesn’t always work — the mix is so bizarre that some jokes simply fail to land — but there’s a giddy energy that courses through the movie from beginning to end.

More than anything else, it feels like Shyamalan Unleashed, operating without the weight of expectations for the first time in years. The filmmaker had actually focused on smaller, character-driven films before The Sixth Sense changed his career trajectory, but ever since that early success, his movies seemed to chase the same formula, twist endings and all. The Visit doesn’t seem concerned with living up to those expectations — there’s no mistaking this for a Spielbergian tale — and it’s a fresher story for it.

If The Visit was some midnight movie festival discovery, we’d be talking about its odd weirdness and the potential of its creator; we’d ask if they could take the promise of this small, indie film and transition into the land of big-scale studio movies. Oddly enough, it’s the same question that should be asked of Shyamalan now. But for the moment, he appears to be keeping things small. His next film is set to be another collaboration with Jason Blum, the low-budget horror producer behind Insidious and the Paranormal Activity films, and while people will certainly have higher expectations his next time out, I hope we see more of this weirder, care-free Shyamalan. He may not be making The Sixth Sense anymore, sure, but for the first time in a very long time, he’s making movies that are actually fun .

The Visit opens Friday, September 11th.

Verge Video: The Verge's interview with M. Night Shyamalan

Film Review: ‘The Visit’

M. Night Shyamalan returns to thriller filmmaking in the style of low-budget impresario Jason Blum with mixed results.

By Geoff Berkshire

Geoff Berkshire

Associate Editor, Features

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After delivering back-to-back creative and commercial duds in the sci-fi action genre, M. Night Shyamalan retreats to familiar thriller territory with “ The Visit .” As far as happy homecomings go, it beats the one awaiting his characters, though not by much. The story of two teens spending a week with the creepy grandparents they’ve never met unfolds in a mockumentary style that’s new for the filmmaker and old hat for horror auds. Heavier on comic relief (most of it intentional) than genuine scares, this low-budget oddity could score decent opening weekend B.O. and ultimately find a cult following thanks to its freakier twists and turns, but hardly represents a return to form for its one-time Oscar-nominated auteur.

In a way, it’s a relief to see Shyamalan set aside the studio-system excesses of “The Last Airbender” and “After Earth” and get down and dirty with a found-footage-style indie crafted in the spirit of producer Jason Blum’s single location chillers. (Blum actually joined the project after filming wrapped, but it subscribes to his patented “Paranormal Activity” playbook to a T.) Except that the frustrating result winds up on the less haunting end of Shyamalan’s filmography, far south of “The Sixth Sense,” “Signs” and “The Village,” and not even as unsettling as the most effective moments in the hokey “The Happening.”

That’s not to say “The Visit” is necessarily worse than some of those efforts, just a different kind of animal. The simplicity of the premise initially works in the pic’s favor as 15-year-old aspiring documentarian Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her 13-year-old aspiring-rap-star sibling Tyler (Ed Oxenbould of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”) say goodbye to their hard-working single mom (Kathryn Hahn, better than the fleeting role deserves), who ships off on a weeklong cruise with her latest boyfriend. The kids travel by train to rural Pennsylvania to meet Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), the purportedly kindly parents Mom left behind when she took off with her high-school English teacher and caused a permanent rift in the family.

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Becca plans to turn the whole experience into an Oscar-caliber documentary (proving she sets her sights higher than Shyamalan these days) and also an opportunity to exorcise the personal demons both she and Tyler carry around in the wake of their parents’ separation. Unfortunately for the kids, their grandparents appear to be possessed by demons of another kind — although it takes an awfully long time for them to grow legitimately concerned about Nana’s nasty habit of roaming the house at night, vomiting on the floor and scratching at the walls in the nude, and Pop Pop’s almost-as-bizarre behavior, including stuffing a woodshed full of soiled adult diapers, attacking a stranger on the street and regularly dressing in formal wear for a “costume party” that never materializes.

Ominous warnings to not go into the basement (because of “mold,” you see) and stay in their room after 9:30 (Nana’s “bedtime”) fly right over the heads of our otherwise pop-culture-savvy protagonists. Becca even stubbornly refuses to use her omnipresent camera for nighttime reconnaissance, citing concerns over exploitation and “cinematic standards” — one of the lamest excuses yet to justify dumb decisions in a horror narrative — until the weeklong stay is almost up.

Shyamalan has long been criticized for serving up borderline (or downright) silly premises with a straight face and overtly pretentious atmosphere, but he basically abandons that approach here in favor of a looser, more playful dynamic between his fresh-faced leads. At the same time, there’s a surreal campiness to the grandparents’ seemingly inexplicable behavior, fully embraced by Tony winner Dunagan and Scottish character actor McRobbie, that encourages laughter between ho-hum jump scares. Their antics only reach full-blown menacing in the perverse-by-PG-13-standards third act. (The obligatory reveal of what’s really going on works OK, as long as you don’t question it any more than anyone onscreen ever does.)

Even if there’s less chance the audience will burst out in fits of inappropriate chuckles, as was often the case in, say, “The Happening” or “Lady in the Water,” Shyamalan still can’t quite pull off the delicate tonal balance he’s after. Once events ultimately do turn violent — and Nana does more than just scamper around the floor or pop up directly in front of the camera — the setpieces are never as scary or suspenseful as they should be. Even worse are the film’s attempts at character-driven drama, including a couple of awkward soul-baring monologues from the otherwise poised young stars, and a ludicrous epilogue that presumes auds will have somehow formed an emotional bond with characters who actually remain skin-deep throughout. One longs to see what a nervier filmmaker could have done with the concept (and a R rating).

The technical package is deliberately less slick than the Shyamalan norm, although scripting Becca as a budding filmmaker interested in mise en scene provides d.p. Maryse Alberti (whose numerous doc credits include multiple Alex Gibney features) an excuse to capture images with a bit more craft than the average found footage thriller. Shyamalan purposefully decided to forego an original score, but the soundtrack is rarely silent between the chattering of the children, a selection of source music and the eerie sound editing that emphasizes every creaking door and loud crash substituting for well-earned frights.

Reviewed at Arclight Cinemas, Hollywood, Sept. 8, 2015. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 94 MIN.

• Production: A Universal release of a Blinding Edge Pictures and Blumhouse production. Produced by Jason Blum, Marc Bienstock, M. Night Shyamalan. Executive producers, Steven Schneider, Ashwin Rajan.
• Crew: Directed, written by M. Night Shyamalan. Camera (color, HD), Maryse Alberti; editor, Luke Ciarrocchi; music supervisor, Susan Jacobs; production designer, Naaman Marshall; art director, Scott Anderson; set decorator, Christine Wick; costume designer, Amy Westcott; sound (Dolby Digital), David J. Schwartz; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Skip Lievsay; visual effects supervisor, Ruben Rodas; visual effects, Dive VFX; stunt coordinator, Manny Siverio; casting, Douglas Aibel.
• With: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn, Celia Keenan-Bolger.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Shyamalan's found-footage spooker has teens in peril.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Teens learn to overcome past fears to deal with cu

The main characters are teens (13 and 15) who try

Dead bodies, one hanged. Elderly man killed in a s

Minor innuendo involving 13-year-old boy who imagi

"F--k" is used once. Other words include

Skype is used as part of the plot. Sony laptop sho

Adults occasionally smoke cigarettes. A boy mimes

Parents need to know that The Visit is a found-footage horror movie from director M. Night Shyamalan. There are plenty of spooky images, sounds, and dialogue, as well as jump scares and a small amount of blood and gore. Viewers see dead bodies (including one killed in a rather shocking way), and two teens, 13…

Positive Messages

Teens learn to overcome past fears to deal with current situations. They sometimes work together but at other times are forced to split up.

Positive Role Models

The main characters are teens (13 and 15) who try their best to survive a bad situation; they're brave, but their situation isn't one anyone would emulate. The adults in the story aren't particularly admirable.

Violence & Scariness

Dead bodies, one hanged. Elderly man killed in a shocking way. Some blood. Spooky images, spooky dialogue, and jump scares. Stabbing with a mirror shard. Teens in jeopardy. Vomiting and poop. A man briefly assaults another man. Rifle briefly shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Minor innuendo involving 13-year-old boy who imagines himself a ladykiller. Nana's naked bottom is shown twice.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k" is used once. Other words include "s--t," "ass," "ho," "bitch," "goddamn," "hell," "douche," and possibly "a--hole." Middle finger gesture.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Skype is used as part of the plot. Sony laptop shown. A Yahtzee! game, with references to toy companies Hasbro and Milton Bradley.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults occasionally smoke cigarettes. A boy mimes "pot smoking" with his fingers.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Visit is a found-footage horror movie from director M. Night Shyamalan . There are plenty of spooky images, sounds, and dialogue, as well as jump scares and a small amount of blood and gore. Viewers see dead bodies (including one killed in a rather shocking way), and two teens, 13 and 15, are frequently in peril. The 13-year-old boy fancies himself a ladykiller, which leads to some minor innuendo, and the "Nana" character's naked bottom is shown a couple of times. Language includes a use of "f--k," plus "s--t," "bitch," and more, most frequently spoken by the 13-year-old. Adult characters infrequently smoke cigarettes, and there's a very brief, mimed reference to smoking pot. Shyamalan is a filmmaker whom horror hounds love to hate, but this movie could be a comeback that fans will want to see. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (19)
• Kids say (82)

Based on 19 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Thirteen-year-old Tyler ( Ed Oxenbould ) and 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge) agree to spend a week with their grandparents while encouraging their mom ( Kathryn Hahn ) to take a vacation with her boyfriend. The kids have never met their grandparents, "Nana" (Deanna Dunagan) and "Pop Pop" (Peter McRobbie), at least partly because when their mother left home 15 years earlier, something terrible apparently happened. At first things seem fine, but then Nana and Pop Pop start behaving strangely. Even if it can all be explained -- Nana gets "sundown" syndrome, and Pop Pop requires adult diapers -- it doesn't quite ease the feeling that something's wrong. Meanwhile, Becca documents their visit on video, hoping to capture something that explains it all.

Is It Any Good?

After several perplexing misfires, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has scaled back, gone for a lower budget and a lighter tone, and emerged with his most effective movie in over a decade. THE VISIT begins interestingly; the potentially creepy moments can be easily explained away and even laughed off, but the director still manages to create a subtle, creeping dread that steadily builds toward the climax.

Shyamalan uses the found-footage concept with more creativity than most other filmmakers, displaying his usual intriguing grasp of three-dimensional space, as well as empty space. The characters themselves are even aware of certain cinematic theories that could make their "documentary" more interesting. They're refreshingly intelligent and self-aware, and they never blunder stupidly into any situation. If the movie has a drawback, it's that fans will be looking hard for clues to one of Shyamalan's big "twists." As to what it is, or whether there is one, we're not saying.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Visit 's violence . How much is shown, and how much is suggested? How did it affect you? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

Tyler considers himself a "ladykiller." Is his dialogue inappropriate for someone his age?

Tyler likes to rap and posts videos of himself. Is he expressing himself, or is he merely seeking fame? What's appealing about fame? Is it OK for kids to start their own online channels?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 11, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : January 5, 2016
• Cast : Kathryn Hahn , Ed Oxenbould , Olivia DeJonge
• Director : M. Night Shyamalan
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 94 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : disturbing thematic material including terror, violence and some nudity, and for brief language
• Last updated : April 7, 2024

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Review: ‘The Visit’ Is ‘Hansel and Gretel’ With Less Candy and More Camcorders

• Share full article

By Manohla Dargis

• Sept. 10, 2015

In “The Visit,” an amusingly grim fairy tale, floorboards creak, doors squeak and lights lower and sometimes shriek to black. The story, a “Hansel and Gretel” redo for Generation Selfie, has the virtue of simplicity and familiarity: A young brother and sister travel into the deep, dark woods, but where they once innocently held hands, they’re now holding camcorders to record an adventure quickened by anxious laughs, yelps and screams and one shivery long knife. These children don’t need someone else to immortalize their once-upon-a-time; they just point and shoot.

The director M. Night Shyamalan has a fine eye and a nice, natural way with actors, and he has a talent for gently rap-rap-rapping on your nerves. At his best, he skillfully taps the kinds of primitive fears that fuel scary campfire stories and horror flicks; at his worst, he tries too hard to be an auteur instead of just good, letting his overwrought stories and self-consciousness get in the way of his technique. After straining at originality for too long, he has gone back to basics in “The Visit,” with a stripped-down story and scale, a largely unknown (excellent) cast and one of those classically tinged tales of child peril that have reliably spooked audiences for generations.

This Hansel and Gretel come equipped not only with his-and-her cameras but also a Spielbergian family dynamic, featuring a loving if somewhat distracted single mother (Kathryn Hahn) and an absent father. One of those well-meaning women whose desires unwittingly unleash a world of chaos, Mom (as she’s credited) opens the movie with some yammering, squirming like a witness for the prosecution in front of a camera operated by her off-screen daughter, Becca (an appealing Olivia DeJonge). Becca and her younger brother, Tyler (Ed Oxenbould, a charmingly exuberant scene-stealer), are to stay with their maternal grandparents while Mom and her boyfriend go on a cruise, and Becca has decided to make a documentary about the trip, the first of many references to moviemaking.

Movie Review: ‘The Visit’

The times critic manohla dargis reviews “the visit.”.

In narrative terms, Mr. Shyamalan keeps it streamlined and simple. Becca and Tyler travel alone to visit their grandparents Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), whom the children have never met or seen in photos. As Mom tells Becca, she hasn’t been in touch with her parents since she left home years earlier, for reasons she refuses to explain, introducing a mystery that ignites a smoldering ember of doubt. Ms. Hahn, an appealingly disheveled blur, does a nice job of setting the enigmatic scene. With her beseeching eyes, Mom looks as if she’s asking for forgiveness, even as the laughter convulsing her mouth insists everything is all right. (Ms. Hahn, one of those screen presences who pushes and pulls at you, at times brings to mind a softer-edged Karen Black.)

Most of what follows takes place in Nana and Pop Pop’s house, an isolated storybook spread. Mr. Shyamalan sets a nice farmhouse scene, with an interior that looks copied straight from Heartland Monthly, complete with sagging armchairs, plank flooring and a rag rug as big as a Volkswagen. The grandparents, in turn, are pure Grant Wood types: gray, lean, almost stringy and a little hard. If they were older or the movie were, you could imagine them hardscrabbling their way through the Depression or driving a Model T out of Oklahoma. To that end, Ms. Dunagan and Mr. McRobbie at first play it largely straight and opaque, with the kind of tightly wound smiles and controlled gestures that suggest Puritan stock or perhaps madness.

Something weird slithers in, first in a crawlspace and then when Nana asks Becca for help cleaning the mischievously large oven, which was apparently built for roasting pigs and other juicy creatures. A total tease, Mr. Shyamalan has fun deploying such time-tested horror tricks, and conducts an entire orchestra of squeaks and screeches amid the shock cuts and Becca and Tyler’s cockeyed camera angles. He also plays with the filmmaking theme, mostly through Becca, a pretentious baby auteur who throws around terms like mise-en-scène. As the scares gather, though, and she loses directorial control, Becca becomes what she always was: every filmgoer (and critic) who thinks she knows everything about making movies, which may be why Mr. Shyamalan so enjoys tormenting her.

“The Visit” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It’s a hard world for little things.

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The Visit (2015) Review

We review the 2015 movie The Visit, which does not contain any significant spoilers. 

M. Night Shyamalan is back – and he really snuck this one in under the radar. The Visit adopts the found footage form of storytelling – a change from Shyamalan’s usual style, though bearing obvious marks of his directorial and writing styles throughout nonetheless – and introduces this horror – akin to the likes of  The Blair Witch Project and  Paranormal Activity – with a simple premise: a young brother and sister visit their somewhat estranged grandparents as a holiday away, while their parents go on a cruise or something more enjoyable.

The Visit Review and Plot Summary

Before meeting their grandparents for the first time in their lives, Becca, aged 15, and Tyler, 13, are told by their divorced mother, Loretta, that she has not spoken to them for 15 years due to their strong disapproval of her marriage with her high school teacher. Becca and Tyler decide to take a camcorder along with them to make a documentary of their visit. Always a fun idea.

At first, the grandparents generally seem like any other adorable old couple, aside from some suspiciously strange requests – they’re adamantly told they must be in bed by 21:30, and that they also mustn’t go into the basement due to some toxic mould. And, of course, with 21:30 being the prime time at which hunger strikes (this isn’t sarcasm), Becca heads to the kitchen for a snack at which point she is rudely interrupted by the witnessing of her grandma projectile vomiting.

Grandpa – or Pop Pop – tells the kids that grandma – referred to as Nana – merely has a case of the flu, before reminding them of the house rules. The days progress and the kids pick up on instances of noticeably bizarre behaviour being exhibited by their grandparents, including Tyler entering Pop’s shed and happening upon a big pile of s**t (akin to  The Happening , coincidentally). Becca decides to question Nana about Loretta leaving home to which Nana being screaming and shaking.

The cute couple are later confronted by a woman they met through some prior counselling sessions. The three of them are seen going into the backyard by the kids, though they never see the woman leaving. Some clues lead the kids to believe their grandparents killed the woman by hanging, at which point they decide to film their grandparents’ goings-on post-curfew, by recording them with the camera.

They decide to film the grandparents, and Nana discovers the camera. Nana grabs a kitchen knife and heads for Becca and Tyler’s shared bedroom, before trying to unsuccessfully break her way in. Reviewing the footage, the kids see the knife and call Loretta explaining the situation and demanding they be picked up. And here’s where the classic Shyamalan twist comes in – upon being shown images of their grandparents, Loretta, horrified, reveals that the people in said images aren’t her parents.

Suitably s******g themselves, Becca and Tyler try to escape but are forcefully kept in by the increasingly creepy grandparents who they now know to be complete strangers. Becca sneaks into the basement and finds her real grandparents, both dead, with their work uniforms from their jobs at a mental hospital, thus revealing the strangers are escaped patients who broke into the house, murdered their grandparents and assumed their identities ( I mean, seriously – identity theft is not a joke, guys ).

Despite it already being a pretty messed up situation, it soon turns into a s**t-uation, when Pop tries to physically and mentally torment Tyler by rubbing a diaper full of s**t in his face, after having locked Becca in a room with Nana who spends the duration trying to eat Becca. Tyler decides he’s put up with enough s**t and, in a fit of pure rage, kills Pops with the help of the refrigerator door. Becca and Tyler escape, and are greeted by Loretta and the police. The film finishes with a heartfelt family-oriented moral, in which Loretta tells Becca not to hold onto her anger surrounding her father’s abandonment of them.

Is the movie The Visit good?

Despite the found footage style of filming being one of my least favourite in the genre of horror (which I’m already a fairly avid hater of), the film just works; it delves straight into the story, and presents us with two admirable characters with situations we can all relate to – having to spend unwanted time with extended families.

Tyler in particular, however, is a highlight of the film. Ed Oxenbould does a wonderful job of maintaining a genuinely comical and endearing aspect to his character alongside the effectively established mysterious and eerie atmosphere created once the film kicks in. With a range of running gags throughout the film – including replacing curse words during unfortunate events with the names of famous female pop stars, and some genuinely good rapping skills – the film provides a uniquely enjoyable form of side comedy combined with a primary dose of peril.

If there’s anything to complain about in regards to this film, it’s the usual inaccurate trope of people with mental illnesses being dangerous and ridiculous – something we all know Shyamalan has done on more than one occasion, though it’s a problem in the film industry and media in general.

Despite the clearly present issue surrounding mental health in films,  The Visit is a film I thoroughly enjoyed. Many claimed this to be Shyamalan’s comeback after the abomination that was  After Earth – and I’d agree. Shyamalan manages to use a form of presentation in a horror film which has been equipped time and time again, yet manages to keep it fresh, full of suspense and, of course, inclusive of a healthy dose of twists to ensure it all pays off. And it does.

What did you think of the 2015 movie The Visit? Comment below.

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Well, it's not in the same league as The Sixth Sense , but director M. Night Shyamalan ends a long dry spell with The Visit. It's a blend of mirth and malice that combines Grimm fairy tales with the found-footage gimmick of Paranormal Activity . A mom (Kathryn Hahn) sends her two kids (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould), both experts with digital cameras, to visit her estranged parents. It's all smiles until Grandma (Deanna Dunagan, wowza) gets naked and Grandpa (Peter McRobbie) does strange things with his adult diapers. No spoilers, except to say that cheap thrills can still be a blast. Not enough to make up for Shyamalan's awful After Earth , but it's a start.

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The Visit (2015): Film Review

• Edgar Ortega
• February 15, 2023

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit broke the director’s run of critically panned films with a campy thriller that takes advantage of the found footage sub-genre.

Who doesn’t love a good comeback story? Hollywood certainly does. After all, when we’re watching a film or TV show play out, we like rooting for the little guy to pick themselves right up after being knocked down in the half-point of the narrative. When it comes to comeback stories in the industry, nobody has quite as remarkable a journey as M. Night Shyamalan . One day he found himself on top of the world, the next he was at the very bottom. The Visit was the movie that gave his career a second shot and broke his streak of controversial projects.

In The Visit , a single mother (Kathryn Hahn, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery ) sends her daughter Becca (Olivia DeJonge, Elvis ) and son Tyler (Ed Oxenbould, Irreverent ) to spend quality time with their grandparents by themselves. At first, Nana (Deanna Dunagan, Stillwater ) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie, Eileen ) seem harmless enough. Their mom’s fear and criticisms of their grandparents don’t really fit the lovely older couple. That is until both start showing they’re mentally unstable and things take a dark turn.

Leading up to this release back in 2015, Shyamalan had fallen from Hollywood’s grace . He spent so many years being built as the next huge auteur in the industry. They weren’t completely wrong about Shyamalan in that sense, though. When you’re watching one of his films, you can easily identify it as one of his own because of the unique style he brings to his movies. The Visit allowed the filmmaker to prove he had more to offer and that he wasn’t going anywhere.

The concept of Shyamalan doing a found footage film through the eyes of two siblings who love filmmaking ran the risk of either being a mess, or a very interesting movie. Fortunately for everyone involved and the audience, this idea ends up working really well. This storytelling tool provides our young protagonists a lot of personality, since they’re quite literally guiding us through the movie and we get to spend the entire runtime with them.

Ed Oxenbould brings a lot of levity and energy, and you can tell he’s having the time of his life, particularly in the film’s climax. That said, Olivia DeJonge is the standout from the set of young actors. She delivers nuance to a role that should be very straightforward. There’s a scene during an interview with Oxenbould’s character where she portrays anxiety solely through her eyes, until we cut to her breaking down in private, and it’s riveting to witness.

In good old Shyamalan fashion, The Visit isn’t safe from discourse . For some viewers, portraying the grandparents as dangerous for simply having mental problems was of poor taste. There is an argument to be made regarding that issue, but ultimately this plot point is used in favor of a twist that switches up the dynamic between the old versus new generation, rather than to be hurtful towards older folks.

Those controversies aside, Peter McRobbie and Deanna Dunagan are quite phenomenal here. In more ways than one they steal the film away from our young cast members and walk a fine line between giving endearing and terrifying performances. Sure, a lot of their darker and scary moments are structured around clichés Hollywood often overuses with older characters in the genre. For what it’s worth, though, Shyamalan makes it work with his camerawork, since it helps immerse you in the experience Becca and Tyler are going through.

As for the movie’s twist, what awaits you in The Visit is quite honestly predictable, but it is a lot of fun to see unravel. It is one of those cases where the situation our characters find themselves in isn’t necessarily surprising, but what makes it fun is seeing Becca and Tyler’s reactions to the plot twist.

The Visit was the perfect vehicle for M. Night Shyamalan to make people change their minds regarding his storytelling skills. It is a story we’re mostly familiar with, but it’s told through exciting lenses thanks to Shyamalan’s sensitivities. In addition, it was inspiring to see a big name like him fund projects with his own money, demonstrating he is willing to go the extra mile to do what he loves the most. It may not be the director’s most original work, but it did open the doors to films such as Split , Old , and his most recent Knock at the Cabin .

The Visit is now available to watch on digital and on demand .

• TAGS: found footage , genre: thriller , M. Night Shyamalan

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Screen Rant

The visit review.

The Visit is a fun and kitschy horror parable - though the trademark Shyamalan twist will be a big disappoint for many viewers.

The Visit  is a fun and kitschy horror parable - though the trademark Shyamalan twist will be a big disappoint for many viewers.

The Visit   follows Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), two siblings who head out to rural Pennsylvania to document the meeting of their estranged grandparents, last seen when their mother (Kathryn Hahn) left home fifteen years ago. When Becca and Tyler arrive at Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop's (Peter McRobbie) farm, they immediately set about crafting the documentary with the intent of showing how their mother leaving home at a young age echoes the pattern of their own father abandoning them when they needed him the most.

However, as Becca and Tyler focus the lens closer on Nana and Pop Pop the more abnormal their subjects reveal themselves to be. As the week-long visit crawls along, the cracks in the grandparents' good-natured facade widen and widen, finally exploding in a fit of horror that Becca and Tyler must fight to survive.

The latest film from beleaguered filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan,  The Visit  is a fun and kitschy horror parable - though the trademark Shyamalan twist will be a big disappoint for many viewers.

Shyamalan both wrote and directed  The Visit , and as his critics might expect, it's a "blessing and a curse" package. On the directorial front, there isn't much crafting or technique to speak of, due to the found-footage format of the film. Like every movie in the (tired) sub-genre, the found-footage "technique" involves coming up with reasonable scenarios and context for people to be filming themselves - and to continue doing so, even when in peril. While the The Visit does manage to root its voyeuristic perspective in both the narrative themes and the personality matrixes of the two main characters, the format nonetheless feels binding, and in moments of real fright or action the usual shaky cam antics disrupt the viewing experience. In short: if you don't like found-footage, you won't like this found-footage movie.

On paper, however, The Visit  does manage to capture a lot of the richness of classic '70s or early '80s horror, unfortunately wrapping it around a flimsy twist - one that will likely elicit more bad stigma for Shyamalan, the crowned king of flimsy twists. To the movie's credit, Shyamalan does what good horror storytellers are supposed to: he takes a familiar and relatable concept (going to visit your grandparents) and twists it into something unfamiliar and menacing.  The Visit  indeed has that "campfire ghost story" quality that could've made it an enduring horror parable - so for anyone who likes their fright flicks on that level (read: creepy more than scary or gruesome) this will be a nice fit. The tone of the story is also blessedly kitschy and always self-aware enough to not take itself too seriously, which creates a level of horror/comedy that fans can at least laugh along  with  (as opposed to  at ).

The cast of characters are drawn well enough, though the two main characters may put-off viewers who can't appreciate the level of meta humor in the would-be media stars. Both Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould thankfully polish their characters into genuine modern (pre-)teens, fleshing out the otherwise flat caricatures of pretentious film snob and "ethnically confused" suburban rapper - personas the movie pokes fun at. In certain scenes where more drama and depth are required, both young leads actually deliver quite well, and Shyamalan interjects some genuine heart and drama into the film (though those same dramatic moments, while quality on their own, feel a bit at odds with the otherwise horror kitsch tone of the film).

Deanna Dunagan ( Unforgettable ) and Peter McRobbie ( Daredevil ) jump in with both feet to the roles of Nana and Pop Pop, respectively. Though the movie keeps the oddball old couple at arm's length, the two veteran character actors own every scene they're in, sometimes with just body movements and glances.  The Visit  only keeps traction because of what Dunagan and McRobbie can deliver; if nothing else, the electricity of what they  might  do keeps every scene they're in lively and riveting. On the peripheral, Kathryn Hahn pops in for a funny light portrayal as "The Mom," only to have to swing all that funny charm over into some key (overly heavy?) dramatic moments.

In the end,  The Visit  is fine horror matinée (or future rental) material for fans who don't mind the kitchsy campfire story style of the film. Those hoping for Shyamalan to continue his 'comeback' after the success of  Wayward Pines , or for the filmmaker to deliver another twist on par with  The Sixth Sense , will end up walking away disappointed.

The Visit  is now playing in theaters. It is 94 minutes and is Rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic material including terror, violence and some nudity, and for brief language.

Agree/disagree with this review? Feel free to let us know how you feel in the comment section!

The Ending Of The Visit Explained

Contains spoilers for  The Visit

M. Night Shyamalan is notorious for using dramatic twists towards the endings of his films, some of which are pulled off perfectly and add an extra layer of depth to a sprawling story (hello, Split ). Some of the director's other offerings simply keep the audience on their toes rather than having any extra subtext or hidden meaning. Shyamalan's 2015 found-footage horror-comedy  The Visit , which he wrote and directed, definitely fits in the latter category, aiming for style over substance.

The Visit follows 15-year-old Becca Jamison (Olivia DeJonge) and her 13-year-old brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) when they spend the week with their mother's estranged parents, who live in another town. Loretta (played by WandaVision 's Kathryn Hahn ) never explained to her children why she separated herself away from her parents, but clearly hopes the weekend could help bring the family back together.

Although The Visit occasionally toys with themes of abandonment and fear of the unknown, it wasn't particularly well-received by critics on its initial release, as many struggled with its bizarre comedic tone in the found-footage style. So, after Tyler and his camera record a number of disturbing occurrences like Nana (Deanna Dunagan) projectile-vomiting in the middle of the night and discovering "Pop Pop"'s (Peter McRobbie) mountain of used diapers, it soon becomes clear that something isn't right with the grandparents.

Here's the ending of  The Visit  explained.

The Visit's twist plays on expectations

Because Shyamalan sets up the idea of the separation between Loretta and her parents very early on — and doesn't show their faces before Becca and Tyler meet them — the film automatically creates a false sense of security. Even more so since the found-footage style restricts the use of typical exposition methods like flashbacks or other scenes which would indicate that Nana and Pop Pop aren't who they say they are. Audiences have no reason to expect that they're actually two escapees from a local psychiatric facility.

The pieces all come together once Becca discovers her  real grandparents' corpses in the basement, along with some uniforms from the psychiatric hospital. It confirms "Nana" and "Pop-Pop" escaped from the institution and murdered the Jamisons because they were a similar age, making it easy to hide their whereabouts from the authorities. And they would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.)

However, after a video call from Loretta reveals that the pair aren't her parents, the children are forced to keep up appearances — but the unhinged duo start to taunt the siblings. Tyler in particular is forced to face his fear of germs as "Pop Pop" wipes dirty diapers in his face. The germophobia is something Shyamalan threads through Tyler's character throughout The Visit,  and the encounter with "Pop Pop" is a basic attempt of showing he's gone through some kind of trial-by-fire to get over his fears.

But the Jamison kids don't take things lying down: They fight back in vicious fashion — a subversion of yet another expectation that young teens might would wait for adults or law enforcement officers to arrive before doing away with their tormentors.

Its real message is about reconciliation

By the time Becca stabs "Nana" to death and Tyler has repeatedly slammed "Pop-Pop"'s head with the refrigerator door, their mother and the police do arrive to pick up the pieces. In a last-ditch attempt at adding an emotional undertone, Shyamalan reveals Loretta left home after a huge argument with her parents. She hit her mother, and her father hit her in return. But Loretta explains that reconciliation was always on the table if she had stopped being so stubborn and just reached out. One could take a domino-effect perspective and even say that Loretta's stubbornness about not reconnecting and her sustained distance from her parents put them in exactly the vulnerable position they needed to be for "Nana" and "Pop-Pop" to murder them. 

Loretta's confession actually mirrors something "Pop-Pop" told Tyler (before his run-in with the refrigerator door): that he and "Nana" wanted to spend one week as a normal family before dying. They should've thought about that before murdering a pair of innocent grandparents, but here we are. 

So, is The Visit  trying to say that if we don't keep our families together, they'll be replaced by imposters and terrify our children? Well, probably not. The Visit tries to deliver a message about breaking away from old habits, working through your fears, and stop being so stubborn over arguments that don't have any consequences in the long-run. Whether it actually sticks the landing on all of those points is still up for debate.

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2015 Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

No one loves you like your grandparents.

The terrifying story of a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents' remote Pennsylvania farm for a weeklong trip. Once the children discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home are growing smaller every day.

Olivia DeJonge Ed Oxenbould Deanna Dunagan Peter McRobbie Kathryn Hahn Celia Keenan-Bolger Samuel Stricklen Patch Darragh Jorge Cordova Steve Annan Benjamin Kanes Ocean James Seamus Moroney Dave Jia Sajida De Leon John Buscemi Richard Barlow Shawn Gonzalez Shelby Lackman

Director Director

M. Night Shyamalan

Producers Producers

M. Night Shyamalan John Burton West Jason Blum

Writer Writer

Casting casting.

Douglas Aibel

Editor Editor

Luke Ciarrocchi

Cinematography Cinematography

Maryse Alberti

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Brian Moon Sebastian Mazzola

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Steven Schneider Ashwin Rajan

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Peter Nolan

Production Design Production Design

Naaman Marshall

Art Direction Art Direction

Scott G. Anderson

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Christine Wick

Special Effects Special Effects

Dane Wilson

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Jennifer Wessner Bob Lowery

Stunts Stunts

Drew Leary Laurie Singer

Sound Sound

Skip Lievsay

Costume Design Costume Design

Amy Westcott

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Teresa Morgan

Blumhouse Productions Blinding Edge Pictures Universal Pictures dentsu

Releases by Date

10 sep 2015, 11 sep 2015, 17 sep 2015, 24 sep 2015, 25 sep 2015, 07 oct 2015, 08 oct 2015, 15 oct 2015, 22 oct 2015, 23 oct 2015, 19 nov 2015, 26 nov 2015, 11 dec 2015, 09 feb 2016, 16 aug 2022, 01 feb 2016, 23 feb 2016, 16 mar 2016, releases by country.

• Theatrical M
• Theatrical 14A
• Physical 15
• Theatrical 12
• Digital VOD
• Physical 12 DVD & Blu-Ray
• Digital 12 Netflix
• Theatrical 15A

Netherlands

• Theatrical 16
• Physical 16 DVD, Blu ray
• Theatrical M/16

South Korea

• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical 16 ICAA 51215
• Theatrical 15+
• Theatrical PG-13

94 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

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I felt like I was home again.

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Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 4

"Old people sometimes have troubles with their body" "People leave. They find something better."

Doesn't quite have the scope of his early work but probably the most vital found footage filmmaking has felt in... ever? Shyamalan's visual grace & intelligence blends really well with the cheap, modern ageism Hansel & Gretal exploitation movie he's making here and he very effectively uses the immediacy inherent to the form to sneak real sudden thrills into some of his usual themes of familial breakdown/estrangement and masking/physically overcoming emotional trauma. There are a number of very creepily conceived shocks but weirdly enough the film is much more emotionally clear & cathartic than it is scary by the end. It totally works though so I have trouble seeing this as a bad thing.

Review by Gonzo ★★★½ 47

▶ 2015 Movie Rankings

▶ RANKED: M. Night Shyamalan

Is it better than Mad Max: Fury Road ? Even a (very welcome and long-awaited) Shyamalan resurgence can't top the chrome juggernaut.

Wait, wait, wait, hold up, hold up... Shyamalan made a good movie?! M. Night Shyamalan? What?! Yes, people, believe it. Your favorite punching bag is back with a vengeance. It's not as great as The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable , but it's a step in the right direction.

Is there a twist? It's Shyamalan. Of course, there's a twist.

Is the twist predictable? I saw it coming from the get-go. It's a pretty good twist though. It's the sort that doesn't ruin the fun even if you do guess it early…

Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★½ 11

Unbelievable. Probably my 2nd favourite Shyamalan...one of the great films where everything you thought was right turns out to be wrong, and certainly the scariest film Shyamalan has made. There is explosive digital formalism, cameras seem to be attached to bodies and in moments of intense, quick movement the frame is obscured by flinging hair and occasional ruptures in the image of a human face; abstractions which could be only captured by the size of consumer grade cameras. In a way, it's inspiring because of that.

But much of this movie's terror comes from the opposite of Shyamalan's earlier tendencies, that we should believe in ghosts and demons ala Dreyer or Tourneur. Rather, people are terrifying, and even worse, family.…

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The Visit review – ill-judged shenanigans from M Night Shyamalan

There’s horror and comedy in this messy, shaky-cam nadir, but not the kind Shyamalan was aiming for

T here’s a terrible sense of dread lurking in M Night Shyamalan’s latest. Sadly, it has nothing to do with the boring shaky-cam story about two incandescently irritating teenagers spending some Grimm-lite time with their unhinged grandparents. Instead, it’s the horrible realisation that the film-maker who was lauded for The Sixth Sense , defended for The Village , and just about tolerated for The Happening , may actually have made a movie worse than Lady in the Water . Is it meant to be a horror film? Or a comedy? The publicity calls it “an original thriller” but it is neither of those things. Only “endurance test” adequately describes the ill-judged shenanigans that ensue, as our two young heroes film their estranged Nana and Pop-Pops scratching at the walls, puking on the floor, and mysteriously stockpiling soiled nappies in the woodshed. Can you spot the inevitable plot twist that lurks noisily in the corner? Can you listen to any more of little Ed Oxenbould’s cute comedy rapping without stabbing yourself in the ear? Can you get a refund? Bring back The Last Airbender !

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Netflix’s Latest Thriller Puts a Scandinavian Spin on the Disaster Movie

Sweden has given us a good movie about why you should never visit Sweden.

Having watched their Norwegian neighbors make a decent stab at the Hollywood-style disaster movie with a loosely related trilogy of films about avalanches ( The Wave ), earthquakes ( The Quake ), and oil rig explosions ( The Burning Sea ), Sweden decided to get in on the action themselves last year with The Abyss (or Avgrunden, if you don’t want to get confused with James Cameron’s similarly perilous underwater epic ). And they didn’t have to look far for inspiration, either.

Out now on Netflix six months after being released in Scandinavia, the quasi-blockbuster is set in the real-life Kiruna, the country’s northernmost town, which in 2014 had to slowly start moving three kilometers east due to the threat of mining subsidence. But with the area’s possible structural collapse still decades away, The Abyss is the only chance many of us will get to witness the carnage that may or may not eventually unfold.

This modern-day tale may have sped up the rippling effects of the world’s largest iron ore mine, an apocalyptic development recently covered in the documentary A Brand New World . However, best known for his work within Sweden’s televisual forte – the brooding, rain-soaked, and woolly-jumpered crime dramas known as Nordic noir – director Richard Holm ( The Machinery , Gåsmamman ) is just as interested in the cracks of suburban life. Indeed, apart from the foreshadowing opening scene in which three teenage hikers fatally plummet through the earth, The Abyss’ slow-burning first half plays out more like a family saga.

Portrayed by Tuva Novotny, whose English-language credits include Borg vs McEnroe and Annihilation , workaholic single mom Frigga is juggling her job as the Kiirunavaara mine’s security manager and the rivalry between her new lover Dabir (Kardo Razzazi) and ex-husband Tage (Peter Franzen). Daughter Mika (Felicia Truedsson) and her girlfriend (Tintin Poggatts Sarri) are busy blocking roads in local protests, while son Simon (Edvin Ryding) is rebelling in the wake of his parents’ divorce.

One key player in the serviceable disaster movie/uninvolving family saga.

It’s a move typical of Sweden’s occasional forays into disaster movie territory. Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure and Triangle of Sadness, for example , both centered around, rather than focused on, devastating natural occurrences, and 2018’s The Unthinkable threw elements of surrealism, melodrama, and military conflict into its state of emergency.

Unfortunately, The Abyss doesn’t possess the pitch-black humor of the former: the only real laugh comes when Frigga knocks out a hyperventilating Tage during their underground reconnaissance. And it lacks the compelling characters of the latter, with only the family’s no-nonsense matriarch making any notable impression. Young Royals fans, in particular, will be left disappointed that Ryding, who plays the dashing prince in Netflix’s queer teen drama, is required to do little more than sulk.

The residents of Kiruna run for cover.

Luckily, Holm, who also co-wrote the script with son Robin, fares better when the film finally kicks into gear with the sight of a crooked lamppost and a young toddler nearly pulled into a pit of quicksand. Anyone with a fear of spelunking should prepare for deeply claustrophobic cave scenes that evoke The Descent , The 33, and even, thanks to a stray hand rising from a mountain of rubble, the closing shot of Carrie . Anyone with a severe case of vertigo, meanwhile, should brace for the climactic rescue involving a pulley system, several pretty brutal impalings, and a sinkhole the size of a skyscraper.

Most impressive is the terrifying sequence when all hell breaks loose as the town center is literally rocked to its foundations, with a frustratingly jammed car seatbelt, motherless stroller, and increasingly powerful tsunami of debris and dust all ramping up the tension. It’s clearly evident The Abyss doesn’t have the same budget or wealth of VFX talent at its disposal as the average Tinseltown B-movie, yet it makes the most of its limited resources.

Divorcees Tage and Frigga just before the mining expedition from hell.

And as you’d expect from a nation that prides itself on humility, it doesn’t stretch the boundaries of credulity, either. The Abyss is the kind of lean disaster film that gets in and out without unnecessarily destroying any major landmarks or obliterating entire populations. Its most destructive set-piece lasts barely five minutes, and while there are a handful of notable fatalities, the body count is far from cataclysmic.

The Roland Emmerichs of this world can rest assured the Swedes aren’t going to muscle in on their territory any time soon. But for those who prefer their disaster flicks without so much bombast, then this abyss is worth peeking into.

This article was originally published on Feb. 19, 2024

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Dead Boy Detectives review: a Sandman spinoff that stands on its own

“While Dead Boy Detectives isn't as serious as The Sandman, it's just as addictive, and is bolstered by a charismatic cast and fantastic visuals.”

• A fantastic cast
• Great world-building
• Striking visuals
• Moody atmosphere
• A terrible pilot
• Some sketchy visual effects

Television has always loved the buddy cop whodunit subgenre. From Joe Friday and Frank Smith in Dragnet to Cagney and Lacey in, well, Cagney & Lacey to Mulder and Scully in The X-Files , these duos investigated all sorts of crimes, from the abnormal to the paranormal, and millions of viewers tuned in each week to see what next mystery they would inevitably solve by each episode’s end.

Dead boys, detectives, psychics, and a whole lot more

A dynamic duo, a gothic world you love to visit, to binge or not to binge.

This tradition continues in the streaming era with Dead Boy Detectives , an uneven yet ultimately winning new series from Netflix. While it’s technically a spinoff of The Sandman , both in its original source material and how it’s connected to Netflix’s 2022 adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s famous comic book , the show stands on its own, and is more like the WB shows of yesteryear ( Supernatural  and Buffy the Vampire Slayer come to mind) and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina than anything else. In its depiction of an afterlife detective agency populated by all sorts of ghosts, psychics, and outsiders, Dead Boy Detectives provides more than enough spooky thrills and unexpected screwball comedy, and is distinguished by a pair of charismatic lead performances and a story that balances many different subplots with careful aplomb.

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The show wastes no time introducing its main characters and what to expect each week. The show’s opener, The Case of Crystal Palace , lays out the blueprint: the straight-laced, by-the-book Edwin Paine (George Rexstrew) and the roguish, devil-may-care Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) are ghostly investigators who solve crimes brought to them by their fellow spiritual brethren. They’ve been doing this for a while, as witnessed by the relaxed chemistry between Rexstrew and Revri in the episode’s opening sequence, but soon their supernatural routine is disrupted by a new arrival, Crystal (Kassius Nelson). She’s an amnesiac psychic who is very much alive, and who quickly joins the dead boys in helping other ghosts find some closure in the afterlife while also trying to figure out why she can’t remember anything about her past, save for a demonic (literally) ex-boyfriend.

As the series progresses, the trio becomes a full-blown club — an agency, if you will — comprised of various freaks, weirdoes, and animals who can morph into humans. One of the chief pleasures of Dead Boy Detectives is getting to meet these citizens of the underworld, and to witness how delicately and deliberately the show’s gothic world is built out. In the friendly column, there’s Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), who was once possessed by hostile happy sprites she now keeps in a glass jar; Tragic Mick (Michael Beach), who insists he’s an otter trapped in a man’s body; and Jenny the Butcher (Brianna Cuoco), who seems relatively normal but attracts all kinds of bad vibes (like stalkers and demons).

Much less friendly, if not downright antagonistic, is the Night Nurse (Ruth Connell), who wants to collect the two dead boy detectives and send them to their proper place in the afterlife; Esther (Jenny Lyon), who wields a lethal cane and likes to collect young girls to feed to the goddess Lilith to achieve eternal youth; and Thomas the Cat King (Lukas Gage), whose horny gaze lands firmly on the sexually repressed Edwin.

All of these characters are types, but it’s to Dead Boy Detectives’ credit that they all feel fresh and unique. Rexstrew and Revri in particular are excellent at elevating their characters to more than what they represent. Edwin may be formal and overly fussy because of his Edwardian upbringing, but Rexstrew doesn’t make him a bore; instead, he finds the charm and comedy in Edwin’s persistence to do things his way. Revri, too, finds shades of depth in Charles, who describes himself as a brute born out of his rough upbringing in 1980s London, but who shows he is much more than than that with each subsequent episode.

The show takes its time to build out not just its two lead characters but its stacked supporting cast as well, with each actor making most of their limited screen time. There’s not a scene wasted or a performance that isn’t crucial to the show, and anyone watching television nowadays knows that a rare thing to come by.

The show’s fantastic cast of characters occupy a world that’s sufficiently Gothic enough to achieve the appropriate moody atmosphere, while also leaving room for moments of humor, romance, and drama. That was par for the course in shows like Buffy and Sabrina , and Dead Boy Detectives is wise enough to mimic what made those shows so successful. Like Sabrina ‘s Greendale, DBD ‘s Port Townsend, Washington, location (where most of the show is set) provides ample opportunity for striking visuals that really show off the talents of the cinematographer and production designer. In particular, there’s a couple of breathtaking shots in episode four, The Case of the Lighthouse Leapers , that would make both Edgar Allan Poe and a young Tim Burton proud.

The show’s “monster-of-the-week” format also allows it to explore different elements of this fictional world while also slowly building out several season-long narratives at the same time. For instance, episode five, The Case of the Two Dead Dragons , is focused mainly on the central mystery of how two teenage boys died at a high school party. But it also touches on, among other things, Crystal’s heated astral plane confrontations with her demonic ex-boyfriend; Niko playing matchmaker with Jenny and a mousy librarian; Esther’s ongoing quest for revenge against the detective agency; the Cat King’s curse on Edwin, which binds him and the others in Port Townsend; and Edwin’s growing realization that he’s in love with his paranormal partner.

This seems like a lot, but the episode, and indeed the entire show, never feels overstuffed. It’s busy enough to keep you tuning in and bingeing as many episodes as you can to find out the next developments of each plotline while also satisfactorily wrapping up each weekly case. The Netflix binge model has its detractors , and there are shows like Disney+’s X-Men ’97  (which drops a new episode every Wednesday) and Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout (which was released all at once) that need a traditional weekly release schedule for their audience to really savor them, but when it works, it works, and Dead Boy Detectives is best enjoyed when watching as many episodes in one sitting as you can.

Dead Boy Detectives has its flaws, with the most glaring one being that it suffers from severe pilot syndrome. The show’s opener is tonally off, busy when it doesn’t need to be, and designed to sell you (and whatever network or streamer it was shopped at) on the series’ premise. But once it settles down and finds its own oddball groove in episode two, The Case of the Dandelion Shrine , Dead Boy Detectives becomes one of Netflix’s most enjoyable original series in quite a while, even if its goals are relatively modest compared with something as grandiose The Sandman , which DBD is loosely tied to.

Much like the original comic series on which this show is based on, you don’t need to know much about The Sandman to enjoy Dead Boy Detectives . If you’re an older fan of Buffy and Angel , or a younger convert to the genre who liked Sabrina or Wednesday , Dead Boy Detectives should satisfy that urge for the strange and the supernatural.

Dead Boy Detectives season 1 is now streaming on Netflix. Digital Trends reviewed six out of the eight episodes provided by the streamer.

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It’s a universal truth that growing up means, among other things, learning how to say goodbye. All the best children’s stories understand this, and, more often than not, the first major goodbye of a child’s life is the one they say to their favorite toy when they realize they’ve outgrown it. This moment of transition, as well as the collateral damage it leaves in its wake, is at the heart of countless beloved children’s movies, including all four Toy Story films.

It’s at the center of Netflix’s newest miniseries, Lost Ollie, too. The series, which is based on William Joyce’s 2016 children’s book, Ollie’s Odyssey, initially seems to be little more than a playful, straightforward tale of one lost toy’s journey back to its owner. But Lost Ollie ultimately has higher ambitions than its Toy Story-esque premise would suggest.

If a TV show is going to retell and stretch out the story of a classic film, then it is incumbent upon said series to justify its own existence. It can’t just tell the same story again in an entertaining way. In order to be successful, the series has to bring something new to the table -- a new angle, perspective, or subversion that makes it feel like it is building upon what came before it rather than simply retreading familiar ground.

That’s especially true when the film you’re remaking is A League of Their Own. Director Penny Marshall’s beloved 1992 classic is not only one of the most quoted movies of all time. but also one of the most beloved and charming comedies of the 1990s. In case that wasn't enough, the film’s cast isn’t just headlined by two charming and charismatic lead performances from Geena Davis and Tom Hanks, but it also boasts an impressive array of supporting performances from the likes of Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell, Madonna, Bill Pullman, Ann Cusack, Jon Lovitz, and David Straithairn.

If there’s anything that the great detective thrillers of the past have taught us, it’s that setting is everything. In a genre that so often tackles themes of corruption and brutality, it stands to reason that a detective thriller will only ever be as rich and compelling as the place it's set in. It’s for that reason that classic Golden Age noirs like Sunset Blvd. and The Third Man, for instance, make their cities just as integral to their stories as the characters in them — if not more integral.

Dark Winds, AMC’s new pulpy detective thriller, understands this. The series, which is based on the Leaphorn & Chee novels by Tony Hillerman, is set on a Navajo reservation in the early 1970s and goes to great lengths to depict its setting as respectfully and authentically as it can. The series is primarily directed and written by creators of Native American descent, and it stars an impressive cast of Native American actors, including Zahn McClarnon, a performer who has spent the past several decades building a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most dependable and compelling screen actors.

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Challengers

Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, turned her husband into a champion. But to overcome a losing streak, he needs to face his ex-best friend and Tashi's ex-boyfriend. Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, turned her husband into a champion. But to overcome a losing streak, he needs to face his ex-best friend and Tashi's ex-boyfriend. Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, turned her husband into a champion. But to overcome a losing streak, he needs to face his ex-best friend and Tashi's ex-boyfriend.

• Luca Guadagnino
• Justin Kuritzkes
• Josh O'Connor
• 112 User reviews
• 147 Critic reviews
• 83 Metascore
• 1 nomination

• Tashi Donaldson

• Art Donaldson

• Patrick Zweig
• Umpire (New Rochelle Final)

• Art's Physiotherapist

• Art's Security Guard
• (as a different name)
• Tashi's Mother
• Line Judge (New Rochelle Final)
• TV Sports Commentator (Atlanta 2019)

• Leo Du Marier

• Woman With Headset (Atlanta 2019)

• Motel Front Desk Clerk
• Motel Husband

• New Rochelle Parking Lot Guard
• USTA Official …
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Taking On "Challengers"

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• Trivia To prepare for her role, Zendaya spent three months with pro tennis player-turned-coach, Brad Gilbert .
• Goofs After Patrick loses the second set in his final round match against Art and smashes his racquet, the chair umpire declares a code violation point penalty, however it should have been a game penalty as Patrick had already received a point penalty earlier in the match (the scoreboard at the bottom accurately reflects the correct score)

Tashi Donaldson : I'm taking such good care of my little white boys.

• Connections Featured in The Project: Episode dated 26 March 2024 (2024)
• Soundtracks Time Will Crawl Written and performed by David Bowie

User reviews 112

• PedroPires90
• Apr 22, 2024
• When was Challengers released? Powered by Alexa
• April 26, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Official Site
• Những Kẻ Thách Đấu
• Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Frenesy Film Company
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
• Pascal Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $15,011,078
• Apr 28, 2024
• $25,011,078

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 11 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos

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