Why are Kelli and Emily revisiting The Visit? No one’s sure. It’s a weird time. But spoilers to follow.

Emily: So it's a very special time in our history. It's the 4 Year, 6 Month, and 25 Day Anniversary of the theatrical release of The Visit by M Knight Shyamalan. For those of you who forgot this movie, how dare you, but also, here’s a quick summary: “Becca and Tyler plan a week-long stay at their grandparents' place, whom they have never seen. Little do they know that their visit will be the most terrifying experience of their lives.” And the trailer.

Kelli: I had to pour another glass of wine for this. Anyway, I don't remember why we decided to talk about this movie. I think you said something like "we should watch The Visit," and I was like, "oh yeah, we should," and then we were like, "Revisiting The Visit, that's funny!" And here we are.

Emily: It's been a long couple of weeks.

Kelli: What is it about this movie that made you want to REVISIT it?

Emily: I haven't seen this movie since it was in theaters, and I remember thinking of this as the first good M. Knight Shyamalan movie since his early work. I was actually surprised it was good at all. To me, this is the first movie of the second part of his career. 

Kelli: So you're saying you didn't like Lady in the Water?

Emily: I didn't even see that one

Kelli: Oh. It was bad!

Emily: That's what I heard. But then I saw the trailer for this and I was like "Creepy old people? Where do I get in line for this movie?"

Kelli: I'm looking at his filmography now and I just remembered that he did The Happening. I think that was when I knew things were bad.

Emily: I recently saw The Happening for the first time.  It was bad still.

Kelli: I actually kind of love it? Like, it's so stupid that it's enjoyable. Mark Wahlburg delivers quite possibly the worst performance of his career.  But that's that movie. I genuinely don't even remember who I watched the Visit with, and I don't remember if I saw it in theaters or at home. But I do remember liking it at the time. I actually feel like after this rewatch, I liked it a little less.

Emily: Oh, it's campy and ridiculous. Don't get me wrong. But I love a good campy and ridiculous horror movie.

Kelli: I don't mind the campy ridiculousness of it. I think what stood out to me this time was the fact that the story seemed kind of hollow. You mentioned that there was all of this emotional family backstory going on, and at times it just felt like... why? From a perspective of horror/enjoyability, though, I still stan. How do you feel about the "documentary" angle?

Emily: So I'm going to give this movie a little bit of credit here. I do think Shyamalan is doing some interesting things with horror genre tropes. A lot of people have done found footage movies before, but usually with found footage stories, we're watching it kind of knowing that the reason this footage was found was because the people who took it did not make it to the end of this movie, so this is all we have left of their story. Think: Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project. 

This is different. We kind of know throughout the movie that this movie has been edited together by these children. And so they're telling us this story of what happened to them. And yeah, you have to suspend disbelief to go with that because this girl has awesome editing skills if that's the case.

Kelli: Yes. She's already working with two cameras, it's kind of wild.

Emily: But it's still an interesting new take on the found footage genre. Because the footage isn't really "found." It's curated and presented to us by the person who collected it. And yeah, these kids are clearly rich AF. 

Kelli: And yet, they seem to share a bedroom? If we're judging by the video in the credits.

Emily: Do they? I just thought the younger brother was bugging her in her room. As little bros do.

Kelli: There were definitely posters of rappers on the wall. ANOTHER PLOT HOLE.

Emily: Maybe mom said "Ok if you have two cameras, you can only have one room."

Kelli: Seems fair

Emily: And she was like "I WILL SUFFER FOR MY ART"

Kelli: But yeah, I agree with you that this is an interesting take on the found footage genre, which has become pretty stale at this point.  And already was stale by the time this movie came out.

Emily: Yes, and let's talk about something else that was stale by this point: The old M. Knight Plot Twist (TM). At this point, we know when we go to see one of his movies, there will be a twist. It worked for him in The Sixth Sense and he's been milking that ever since. 

Kelli: Yeah, and when you expect a twist, you're always way more likely to figure it out.

Emily: Yeah so... how did you feel about the plot twist in this one

Kelli: Well, when we got together (over iMessage) to watch this movie, I had basically forgotten what the twist was. So it's hard for me to know at what point I figured it out when I originally watched it. But it was certainly before the point that the movie actually tells you what's going on. They lay it on REAL thick.

Emily: Yeah... I really kind of hate it when people judge a movie based on whether or not they were able to guess a twist. Because if you're enjoying the ride, who the fuck cares. So when I say I guessed it early on, I'm not really knocking the movie or trying to brag. Because it is really obvious.

Kelli: Right. If a twist happens and you didn't see it coming, it's like an extra treat. 

Emily: And at the end of the day, even if you realize early on that these kids have essentially been kidnapped and don't know it... that's still really creepy. The point is they don't know it yet, and they're in peril.

Kelli: Yeah, and you don't know exactly how it's going to play out.

Emily: It's like with a haunted house movie. You know right away you're watching a haunted house movie. But the point is the people in the movie don't. So at what point are they going to realize and freak the fuck out.

Kelli: I do think that Shyamalan started to rely on the twist as something that would MAKE his movies enjoyable, and that's when problems arise, because if your whole movie is built around a big reveal, it feels sort of empty the second time you see it. But I think there's enough going on here that it's still fun even when you know.

Emily: Right. And I knew it all along the first time. So I still enjoyed it. We sort of talked about this while we were watching, but I think one of the reasons this works for me is that old people are scary. Sorry to the old people reading this.

Kelli: Yeah, it's scary because it's watching an inevitability.

Emily: Right.

Kelli: We are scared of getting old because getting old is getting closer to death, and it's losing control in a lot of ways.

Emily: It's the same reason we're afraid of a lot of horror. We're afraid of death.  To me, getting old is worse than dying because if I'm dead, IDGAF. If I'm old, I gotta deal with slowly losing grip on reality and control over my body, which is what we see in various ways in this movie.

Kelli: Right. And it also serves to help us understand why the kids wait so long before fully freaking out about how weird things are -- because everyone keeps saying, 'they're old, it just be like that sometimes.'

Emily: Right and we're like... it don't be like that tho.

Kelli: Yeah, I was like have y'all ever met any actual old people? Because this is a little much. Do we think it's trying to say something about the dismissiveness with which we treat the elderly?

Emily: Again, maybe I'm giving this movie too much credit, but I do think it's saying something about the dismissiveness of how we treat the elderly. I think this movie is saying a lot of interesting things, honestly, and yet the final note we land on is one of the least interesting things this movie has to say.

I think Shyamalan likes to always have a strong moral at the end of his movies as well. And the problem is, sometimes he pulls the focus to the wrong damn thing. Like the final thing the mom says at the end is, "Don't stay angry at people for dumb shit" essentially.

Kelli: Yeah, it's kind of like... he doesn't realize what he's doing. Like why should we care about that when we don't actually know her parents at all? We can't feel sad for her over losing her parents when we literally didn't meet them.

Emily: Right.

Kelli: And she only knows they're dead for literally one minute of the film. LITERALLY.

Emily: I can't even really figure this out... was it the real grandparents who invited the kids down to visit? Or the fake ones?

Kelli: Okay, I think it was the real grandparents. And I think they mentioned that the kids were visiting when they were volunteering at the hospital, which was how the fake ones found out about it. So they escaped and killed them real quick and then took their place.

Emily: Ok that makes sense.

Kelli: Because that's what the dude was saying at the end, he was like "they mentioned the grandkids" bla bla bla.

Emily: I just thought it was weird that they were like, "Your grandparents kept talking about how great you all were." And I'm like... but they've never met their grandkids. 

Kelli: Also I think he might have referenced that the woman was in the hospital because she killed her own kids or something? It was hard to make sense of what he was saying because he was kind of mumbling and also staggering around while he said it.

Emily: Yeah his wife killed her two children. So she wanted to have a chance to be a grandmother.

Kelli: Right right. Wait a second. Those kids are BOTH AUSTRALIAN IRL.

Emily: They both did good American accents

Kelli: They did. I'm now slightly more impressed with that boy's skills, even though I hate him.

Emily: I think you're supposed to find him annoying though.

Kelli: Yeah, I know. I do think his performance during the climax was a little unconvincing though.

Emily: How so?

Kelli: It's hard to explain why - it's that feeling of watching an actor and being incredibly aware that they're acting in that moment. And that was how I felt about him during that scene.

Emily: He gets a diaper smashed in his face. It was a weird scene.

Kelli: It was, for sure. I also, again, couldn't understand half of what he was saying. I thought the girl was great, though. And Kathryn Hahn is always good, even when she has basically nothing to do.

Emily: This is very good writing where we don't refer to anyone by their names in the movie.

Kelli: LOL, right?

Emily: The girl, the boy, the old lady, the old man, and Kathryn Hahn.

Kelli: But yeah, ultimately I feel like this movie has a lot of interesting things going on beneath the surface but doesn't focus on them quite enough to actually be GOOD good. So instead it's mostly just fun - and that's okay too. What parts scared you the most?

Emily: The erratic behavior is scary because when people don't act like people normally do, that's unsettling to watch. So I guess the "grandmother" wandering around at night was the creepiest, because she was more animal than human. Which is I guess a good time to mention that while we were watching this movie, we decided that these old people might actually be cats.

Kelli: Yes. All of the weird things they did - shitting in weird places, vomiting, running really fast around the house in the middle of the night, scratching the walls... All of those things are just cat qualities.

Emily: Yes. Just imagine the cats in your house are old people Think about how creepy that would be. My old people are sleeping on the edge of the bed and on the top of the dresser. Completely naked.

Kelli: My old people are not currently in my line of vision. So that's extra scary. They could be doing anything. God only knows what they're up to.

Emily: Horrifying

Kelli: Okay, one last thing. The rapping: why?

Emily: Good question. You said it was one of the only things you remembered about this movie, so it definitely "worked" on some level. As much as you say you hated it.

Kelli: Yeah, it worked on an extreme cringe level. I think I tend to remember things about movies that I found to be very unsettling. So, I remembered the rapping, and I remembered the woman scratching the wall.

Emily: I think when material is dark, writers like to throw in a little lightness so that the audience can breathe. I don't really think this is any deeper than that.

Kelli: Yeah, it's just that while being admittedly "light," it wasn't funny, because it was just terrible. It's like how watching a bad drama is fun but watching a bad comedy isn't. There were certain elements of humor here that did work, but this was not one of them... and they returned to it at least three times.

Emily: Which is why there aren't very many good comedies. Comedy is hard. That's my hot take. Most comedy movies end up being bad.

Kelli: Yeah, it depends. Obviously there are a lot of good comedies out there, but my god, the bad ones are unwatchablle.

Emily: I'd much rather watch a bad horror movie than a bad comedy. But to be fair I'd much rather watch a bad horror movie than a lot of things.

Kelli: I love watching bad movies, but I never watch bad comedies.

Emily: Yes same.

Kelli: Give me a bad drama, bad action movie, bad thriller, bad horror movie... but not a comedy. The second-hand embarrassment is too much. 

Emily: At least there's entertainment value in bad horror. There is not entertainment value in bad comedy.

Kelli: Nope. And thus, there is no entertainment value in watching a small white boy rap.

Emily: Yes this was the least good part of the movie in a movie that I will still argue was very good.

Kelli: Yes, fair. I definitely think people who haven't watched it should give it a try. It's not long, it's scary in a way that won't ruin your life, and like we said, it's doing some interesting things with genre and theme, whether or not it realizes it. 

Emily: Yeah maybe it's accidental, but it's still a good time.

Kelli: Yes!

Emily: I hope you enjoyed this random movie review, everyone And who knows? Now that we're sheltering in place, maybe we'll review some other random shit while we're at it.

What did you think of The Visit? Other Shyamalan movies? Let us know in the comments!