Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/585465
16 UCW OCTOBER 14-20, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM At this point, when getting ready to go and see an M. Night Shyamalan movie, it could go so many ways. Will it be passable, like The Happening and Signs? Will it end with me getting disgusted at the hack writing and deciding to take a nap halfway through, like The Village? Or, will I compose mental hate mail and need therapy, like after watching Lady in the Water and Avatar: The Last Airbender? Well, depending on your ability to tolerate Shyamalan falling short of his first film for the billionth time, you probably won't hate The Visit (94 min- utes). It certainly isn't as interesting as some of his earlier films, but at least it's no Lady in the Water. Of course, it also never quite figures out exactly what it is either. There are elements of a modern fairytale, with two children being sent off into the metaphorical woods and ending up with someone a little creepy. There are some scenes that I'm pretty sure were meant to be comic, even if I wasn't laughing. But, what starts out as a subpar shaky-cam thriller turns into a video nasty, generating horror through the torture of children. Granted, they were irritating children, but that doesn't make it cool to torture them. The justification for the shaky-cam style is that Rebecca (Olivia DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are involved in making a documentary of their grandparents, who they have never met. Their mother Loreta, a confusingly cast Kathryn Hahn, has not seen her parents for fifteen years, but is completely comfortable sending her children to them on a train while she gets some adult time with her new boyfriend. That right there is some model parenting. To further confuse the situation, she refuses to tell her children why she became estranged from her parents, or discuss them in any way. Given how the film moves to establish the anxiety and abandonment issues that the kids are dealing with after their father deserted them, it seems like a bad idea to put them on a train and send them to stay with strangers for a week, but maybe that's just me. After the children are obnoxious on a train they meet pop-pop James (Peter McRobbie) and gramma Doris (Deanna Dunagan). They are taken to an isolated farmhouse and become even more obnoxious. As the week progresses, their grandparents start acting strange. Of course, when Tyler points out how strange they are acting he gets a speech from both Rebecca and Loreta about how old people sometimes forget things, play with axes and projectile vomit because that's just part of growing older. I would give Shyamalan credit for confronting ageist stereotypes, but I really don't think he put much thought into how those stereotypes might mask increasingly violent behavior. Plus, Loreta's indifference here just serves once more to illustrate her awful parenting. The film really doesn't do more than establish that Something Is Going On until the last twenty minutes or so, and the "twist" is a good one. Shyamalan must have done something right, because of all the scenarios I thought of, the final reveal was unexpected. If you can toler- ate shaky-cam and irritating children being psychologically tortured, you'll probably have some fun with this one. Now playing at Patriot 14 + IMAX. I Did Not See That Coming The Visit (Rated PG-13) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200. Hours: 9am-6pm Mon-Fri Personalize your life with custom gift items: trending accessories, women's gifts, men's gifts, baby/kids' gifts and other unique items by Sophia's Gifts. 3006 Bragg Blvd. 910.323.1791 GRAND OPENING OCT. 22, 2015 GRAND OPENING OCT. 22, 2015