The latest PG-13 “horror” flick recently released in theatres, The Visit by M. Night Shyamalan, opens with a girl, Rebecca, filming her mom as she tells the story of how she ran away from home. A typical cliché’ love story- girl falls in love, her parents are against the relationship and in an act of rebellion she runs away from home and gets married(of course the marriage ends up failing when her husband decides to pursue a younger woman). She goes on to set-up an important plot point as she mentions that on the day she left, something horrible happened between her and her parents causing all communication with them to become non-existent for the last fifteen years. Due to this rift in the relationship between their mom and grandparents, Becca
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Many of the scenes that attempted to create a wave of fear for its viewers only succeeded in quick gasps of shock (mostly due to surprise jump scares.) only to be replaced once more with laughter. Of course there was the occasional intentional humor thrown into the mix – Replacing swear words with the name of celebrities among other things- in an attempt to lighten the mood. True, there are moments in The Blair Witch Project that can be considered to have a slight humor to them, but it is very subtle and believable while still managing to maintain the suspense and leaving viewers with a sense of dread. Conversely the humor in The Visit is blaringly obvious and at times feels almost forced. A great example is when the kids were playing hide-and-seek in the crawl space; the grandmother appears out of nowhere and starts crawling after them with swift movements, laughing her head off like a lunatic only to turn around and leave. As she exits, the hem of her dress is shown to be twisted upward exposing her nude backside. While it may have lightened the mood, it also diminished any sense of tension that had been previously built while simultaneously overriding the intensity of the
Many of the scenes that attempted to create a wave of fear for its viewers only succeeded in quick gasps of shock (mostly due to surprise jump scares.) only to be replaced once more with laughter. Of course there was the occasional intentional humor thrown into the mix – Replacing swear words with the name of celebrities among other things- in an attempt to lighten the mood. True, there are moments in The Blair Witch Project that can be considered to have a slight humor to them, but it is very subtle and believable while still managing to maintain the suspense and leaving viewers with a sense of dread. Conversely the humor in The Visit is blaringly obvious and at times feels almost forced. A great example is when the kids were playing hide-and-seek in the crawl space; the grandmother appears out of nowhere and starts crawling after them with swift movements, laughing her head off like a lunatic only to turn around and leave. As she exits, the hem of her dress is shown to be twisted upward exposing her nude backside. While it may have lightened the mood, it also diminished any sense of tension that had been previously built while simultaneously overriding the intensity of the