Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

The Visit

Like a Tijuana tart whose only talent is gobbling donkey cock, M. Night Shyamalan is a one trick pony.  So to speak.

M. or Night or whatever the fuck people are supposed to call him (the one time I met up with him at his apartment in Philly even he didn't seem to know the right answer) is the master of the twist ending - so much so that like Christopher Walken demanding more cowbell Shyamalan has become a parody of himself.  Check out this Robot Chicken spoof for proof.

Pretty much every one of Shaniatwainalamalan's movies can be summed up in one sentence beginning with "But" and ending with "the whole time."

The Sixth Sense - But Bruce Willis is actually dead the whole time.

Unbreakable - But Bruce Willis is actually a superhero the whole time.

Signs - But aliens really did make the crop circles the whole time.

The Village - But it's really the present day the whole time.

Lady in the Water - But a half-assed bedtime story sucks as a movie the whole time.

The Happening - But it was fucking trees killing everyone the whole time.

Devil - But the old lady was the Devil the whole time.

The Last Airbender - But not having a twist is actually worse.

After Earth - But not even Will Smith is safe from the Shyamalan Curse.

Ok, so the last two didn't have the patented Shyamalan twist.  Maybe that's why in a career that's been a downward spiral to rival Charlie Sheen's since "Winning!" they were the ass-fumiest of the bunch?

And now, in a desperate bid to return to relevance, Shyamalamadingdong is back to vintage twist form with The Visit, which can be summed up by the spoiler-filled sentence:

But they were actually escaped lunatics and not the kids' grandparents the whole time.

Yes siree Bobamalan, a woman who hasn't spoken to her parents in 19 years decides to ship her 15-year-old daughter, Becca (Olivia "Newton" DeJonge), and her 13-year-old son, Tyler (Ed "Olly Olly" Oxenbould), off to stay with the grandparents they've never met - or even seen a picture of - for a week-long visit.

As soon as the two city kids arrive in the rural hamlet of Masonville, PA, it's clear Nana (Deanna "Sooner Begun Again Sooner" Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter "You Know, That One Guy" McRobbie) are a bit eccentric.  Or maybe demented.  Or possibly deranged.  Or, you know, incontinent, exhibitionist, psychotic murderers.

The Visit is a cheap haunted house.  Every scare is a jump scare, usually resulting from Nana leaping into the frame from the side or below.  Shineboxalamalan's creative well must be drier than a Death Valley martini because when he's not stealing J-Horror tropes or biting on shots from The Blair Witch Project he's padding out his hour-at-best story with self-referential moviemaking jargon ("ironic scoring," "visual tension", "denouement") and ham-fisted meta-commentaries on the nature of storytelling that say more about his Kong dong-sized ego than humiliating and butchering the movie critic character in Lady in the Water did.

But hey, at least The Visit features a middle-class white boy rapping.  Numerous times.  What the Vanilla Ice fuck?!