Oh, M. Night Shyamalan where have you been. At the turn of the millennium, he was greatly considered one of the most promising filmmakers of the twentieth century. With films (which would later be dubbed classics) like: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs – Shyamalan was a filmmaker who had unique ambition, with a sense of creative potency that made his films must sees. Even in the latter years his other movies like: The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening, were not greatly admired, (in fact most of them were critically lauded). Whatever the case, maybe I defended the director, and still, to this day, find a slight guilty pleasure in The Happening despite being, well, awful.

Then the shift happened. It began with The Last Airbender, and ended with After Earth …. I was beginning to lose hope. He produced a micro budget horror flick titled Devil which was mild at best, and had a successful run on the small screen with the very entertaining Wayward Pines. But still, when you have a movie AS bad as The Last Airbender on your directing resume, it’s going to be tough noodles to win that fan-base back. Folks, I can now say (after much relief) The Visit, is a win for not only the studio who produced it, but a director who desperately needed to get the good graces back of his once loyal fans (like me).

You may find yourself sinking in your chair when about five mins into The Visit it’s revealed this is yet another ‘found-footage’ type film. Where even in moments of perilous danger our heroines manage to record every kit and caboodle. This time our hero is a 15 year old named Becca (Olivia DeJonge), a teen setting out to make a documentary about her first encounter with some grandparents that she’s never met. Simple, right? Along the way her puberty induced, germophobic rapper brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) steals some key lines with his swagger, but EVEN he thinks meeting his newly found grandparents is far fetched (the grandparents found the gang on Facebook and initiated the trip).

Of course, nothing seems strange about Nana and “pop-pop” (played to a fiddle by Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie – who seem to be having too much fun playing these roles) – until Becca sneaks out for a late night snack to see her Nana puking uncontrollably, or scratching at the bark of her door naked. As long as the gang is in bed before the 9:30pm curfew, well things should be fine. They are just getting old.

YEAH, RIGHT.

A few deadly snips of hide and seek that go awry, mix to the confines of a few oven cleanings, it seems everything is in tip-top shape. Or is it? The mother (Kathryn Hahn) believes that age is a factor, and simply insists the kids are just letting things seep into their heads. Isn’t that always the case?

From a writing standpoint, if you know what Shyamalan’s notorious for in his thriller escapades, well, it’s that you can expect 100% a huge TWIST in the end, and my goodness it’s terrific. The kind of moment when your jaw drops from amazement when you realized what just happened…happened. All the young actors do fine work, and with a script as stylish as this one, there is much for them to do. In hindsight, the two actually score some very BIG laughs (intentionally) including Tyler, who has an obsession with rapping on the regular. Tyler is quite awesome, and also has a fun habit of substituting singer’s names for swear words, “When I stub my toe I’ll yell ahh! Shakira” he tells his sister.

Those darkly comic moments, balanced with an edgy unpredictable final act coincides with Shyamalan’s earlier work. Of course that’s not to say there aren’t ‘typical’ jump scares to keep in tune with the family friendly PG13 rating, because that was almost to be expected. That being said, I was still caught up in many moments (especially the final tier, which is very engrossing). I was took back to a time when I was younger watching R.L Stine’s Goosebumps on TV (and all my 90s babies will understand this reference). Goosebumps was how, we, youngsters back in the day got their ‘horror’ fix. So it’s eagerly thirst quenching when a film can fill that void. Grade: B+