M. Night Shyamalan has proven himself a masterful visual
storyteller several times over. From his breakthrough The Sixth Sense, which sold its famous big twist in a wordless
reveal, to Signs and The Village, which kept their monsters
almost entirely out of the frame, he’s shown a facility with long takes and
precise composition, playing with background and foreground information and use
of focus. Such patience, which he’s put to great effect even in big digital
spectacles like After Earth, is rare
in mainstream filmmaking these days. His latest film, The Visit, is a found footage horror movie, at first glance a form
antithetical to his visual precision. But he uses it for all it’s worth, making
its shaking and self-aware status assets instead of impediments. The carefully casual
cinematography is used to highlight the importance of what’s seen and what’s
not seen, how people perform for a camera and for each other, and how scary it
can be to not have access to full information about a situation or a person.
The movie we’re watching is a documentary a 15-year-old girl
(Olivia DeJonge) is making about her estranged grandparents. She and her 13-year-old
brother (Ed Oxenbould) are meeting them for the first time, their mother (Kathryn
Hahn) having had an angry severing of ties before their births. A precocious
film buff thinking she’s on the verge of creating a moving story of family
reunion, she conscripts her brother to be an assistant cameraman. So that’s how
cinematographer Maryse Alberti convincingly explains two angles on the
happenings as they head off to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania
farmhouse to spend a week. She lectures her brother on the importance of mise-en-scène, on allowing the frame to
suggest more beyond what it literally sees, on making sure they only film that
which they’re directly involved with. (Consequently, the movie’s the
best-looking, well-considered example of its type.) He’s happy to help, but
also admits, “Who gives a crap about cinematic standards?”
Setting the groundwork for understanding why these kids end
up with many fussy shots, and continue to film even when their vacation starts
getting creepy, Shyamalan uses the camcorder footage to stage scenes of great
visual mystery and uncanny normalcy to directly comment upon our position as
viewers. We see what we see because of characters’ decisions. This puts us close
to their thoughts, where a zoom or a pan can clue us into the mind of the
person behind the scenes. Before the camera, we see people playing roles,
pulling faces, trying to be what others expect of them. Behind it, we see
curiosities in revealing visual choices. Like the best found footage – The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield,
Paranormal Activity, Unfriended – the closeness it affords, and the
commonness of its look, comments directly upon the character’s preoccupations.
Here we see a girl who thought she could shape her life’s narrative, but realizes
her grandparents aren’t following the script she’d had in her head.
When the kids first arrive, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop
Pop (Peter McRobbie) go out of their way to be grandparently stereotypes.
They’re excited to meet the youngsters and are eager to fill a role they’ve
never before gotten to play, giving tours, playing games, and providing lots of
baked goods. Together the four characters have funny and awkward attempts to
connect, forcing a family dynamic while gingerly ignoring as best they can the
fact they’re total strangers. The charade can’t last long, and the first sad
twist is a reveal of encroaching senility. While the kids wander around, hang
out, ask questions, and get footage (the movie is perceptive about kids’
aimless free time to be filled with hobbies and wondering) they notice
something off about the old folks. It’s
not just the strict 9:30 bedtime. The elderly couple is suffering from
forgetfulness, confusion, mood swings, sleepwalking, incontinence, violent
anger, and maybe dementia or schizophrenia, too.
They’re just old, the kids think. That’s what their mom
tells them when they worriedly Skype with her. They should just be careful and
make the best of it. It’s only a few more days. Besides, it’ll make for a
better documentary. Sliding into mercilessly nasty suspense, the movie accrues creepy
details (a locked shed, a child-sized oven, a muddy well) and brilliant
misdirection before springing surprise jolts in a finale full of jumpy scares,
gross out shocks, perfectly timed violence, and the worst game of Yahtzee ever
recorded. Every step of the way, it’s about what’s known and what’s unknown,
what we can see for sure and we fear we can’t. While satisfying genre demands,
Shyamalan makes good use of his conceit, cleverly pointing out its own
mechanics (“This can be the dénouement,” the girl whispers excitedly near the
climax) while sitting in unsettling intimate territory. It plays on common fears
that older people in your life will inevitably slip away from you and become
something you don’t recognize.
The Visit is a movie about the nature of
performance, the person you try to be when others are watching. It’s smart
about finding the performative aspects of childhood, and family life in
general in another of Shyamalan's stories of broken families looking to be made whole. The form is an added wrinkle. The theoretical audience the camera represents
is a factor in the leads’ behavior. We see the kids setting up shots, playing for
the camera, looking at footage, editing, putting in music, and discussing their
creative decisions. The girl hopes it’s not too schmaltzy. The boy wants to rap
over the end credits. As the creepiness of their week builds, their posturing
falls away. Eventually the camera is left to only capture clear slashes of
fright, as characters become not who they want to be seen as, or who they hope
to find, but who they really are. Amusing, scary, admirably strange, and
expertly button-pushing, this is Shyamalan at his most crowd-pleasing.
