Shyamalan makes brilliant return in The Visit

In 1999, M. Night Shyamalan jolted moviegoers worldwide with the supernatural thriller, The Sixth Sense. But many felt his films since then haven’t had that same spark. Fans will happily welcome back a revived Shyamalan, who returns in top form with The Visit, perhaps his finest directing and storytelling effort yet.

Not all homecomings are joyous occasions. Family strife, Shyamalan points out in The Visit, can have a sorrowful staying power. Loretta Jameson (Kathryn Hahn) cut off communication with her parents 15 years before the movie starts when, at age 19, she eloped with an older man who would later abandon her and their two children. Although Loretta and her parents have not resolved their anger, she puts Becca (Olivia DeJonge), now 15, and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), 13, on a train to visit their maternal grandparents while she goes on a seven-day cruise with her new boyfriend. Becca and Tyler take a video camera—the lens through which Shyamalan frames the action—to shoot a documentary about their first meeting with their grandparents.

Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) live in a big house on an extensive property far from civilization (and cell phone towers) deep in the snowy Pennsylvania countryside. Welcoming at first, Nana starts to display odd behavior, like clawing at a wall with her backside exposed. Pop Pop explains it as “sundowning,” a form of dementia triggered by nightfall. He warns the kids not to leave their bedroom after 9:30 p.m.

But when Becca and Tyler witness Pop Pop’s peculiar conduct, they—and viewers watching through the kids’ camera and eyes—anxiously begin to wonder if Nana and Pop Pop are senile or sinister. As the menace escalates, the kids’ rosy resilience turns gray. Each day they grow more fearful about the manner in which their visit might come to an end.

Every part of Shyamalan’s production (rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic material including terror, violence, and some nudity, and for brief language) enriches a story more satisfying than the Oscar-nominated The Sixth Sense. Shyamalan precisely metes out humor and tightly controls the filming—hurriedly dragging the camera through the crawl space under the house or rigidly capturing an oddly angled panorama from a camera positioned on a kitchen countertop. He also nimbly weaves in other strands of tension: Becca repeatedly quizzes a tight-lipped Nana about the events of the day her mother left her parents’ home, and Tyler still reels from his father’s abandonment. Oxenbould, who steals every scene he’s in, is as captivating as Shyamalan's first child star, Haley Joel Osment.

It may be no coincidence Shyamalan chose 15 as the number of years to mark Loretta’s absence from her parents. He, too, seems to recognize it’s been that long since he visited moviegoers with an electrifying film.