The Visit

There's odd, there's very odd and then there's The Visit, which neatly subverts the notion that, in films anyway, grandparents are always nice, kindly folk. No, they're not. Two kids (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) are sent by their mother (Kathryn Hahn) to spend quality time with her estranged parents. By day, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) are nice as pie. But come nightfall, things get very, very weird indeed. Writer/director M Night Shyamalan has had his ups (The Sixth Sense) and his downs (The Last Airbender) and this sits somewhere mid-spectrum. The self-filmed style, though impeccably done, has become horribly old hat since The Blair Witch Project. A contrived and cockamamy "explanation" could have been cut, as could some oddly random rap from Oxenbould's wannabe hip-hop artist. But there is some genuinely scary stuff, too, and if you're a lover of the weird, it's a must-see.