Atomic Fangirl

Nutshell: great twist, not-so-great movie.  Grade: C

Visiting gramma and grampy.  Who doesn’t love that?  Cookies, hot chocolate, tons of love and affection…and locking yourself in your room ’til sunup.  Not what you recall growing up?  Well, that’s The Visit, and while there are tons to really like here, the whole doesn’t equal the sum of it’s few scary parts.

“People are scared of old people for no reason.”  There’s a great line, and a killer theme, with M. Night’s use of scary things like the fear of loss of control as people get older.  He even pulls out Sundown Syndrome, a real thing that definitely can be written sinister with the right touch.

However, The Visit just doesn’t seem to connect with the creepy most of the time.  There are plenty of “gotcha!” moments, and some serious scary here and there, but these are tidbits in an otherwise bland buffet. Perhaps that’s because I saw several excellent plot ideas that either drifted off, or were simply dropped.  There’s a good reason why a few are left hanging, but all-in-all the sense of cloistered dread just isn’t there.  If it was, I wouldn’t have cared about the other storylines…but as it is, they feel unfinished, rather than a moment that adds up to a satisfying whole. Continue reading →