Be afraid, The Visit is a seat-squirming thriller you’ll really enjoy

REVIEW: While this is very much a B-movie in both scale and style, The Visit could not have been executed any better.

The Visit (M)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan (The Last Airbender)

Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn.

Rating: ***

Wanna play a guesting game?

High on his own supply after the phenomenal success of 1999’s The Sixth Sense, American writer-director M. Night Shyamalan went on to fly way too close to the box-office sun.

By the time of his inevitable flame-out, the goodwill of a complete generation of moviegoers had been cooked to a crisp.

If you have experienced any of Shyamalan’s later crimes against cinema — The Lady In the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender and After Earth — you’re probably thinking the forgive’n’forget thing remains one burnt bridge too far away.

Think again. For with The Visit, Shyamalan has crafted a slow-burning, seat-squirming thriller that more than passes muster in all the departments that matter.

The script is strikingly uncomplicated, and much the better for it. Necessary info is either revealed or withheld in all the right places.

All that really needs to be known about the premise is that two young siblings are meeting their maternal grandparents for the first time.

Scary ... Olivia DeJonge, left, and Kathryn Hahn appear in a scene from The Visit. Picture: Universal Pictures via AP

15-year-old Rebecca (Olivia DeJonge) and 13-year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) have agreed to spend a week with these relative strangers (or is that stranger relatives?) while their stressed single mum (Kathryn Hahn) takes some time out with her new boyfriend.

To inject a little excitement into what could the dullest week of their lives, Rebecca and Tyler bring along a camcorder each.

Not only to document the awkward experience ahead of them, but also to explore why their mother became estranged from her seemingly lovely parents many years ago.

What follows could be described as an indirect cross of the old Hansel & Gretel fairytale with the newish stylings of found-footage fright-fests like Paranormal Activity.

It is a simple and straightforward blending of two distinct storytelling formats that is trickier to pull off than it first looks.

On set ... Peter McRobbie, Ed Oxenbould and Deanna Dunagan in a scene from The Visit.

If there is an X-factor that secures success for The Visit, it is the casting of unknown elderly actors Deanna Dunagan (as Nana) and Peter McRobbie (Pop-Pop) as two of the creepiest geriatrics to ever shuffle across a screen.

Rebecca and Tyler quickly come to learn that Nana is nice enough in the daytime, but is to be avoided at all costs late in the evening. (From behind locked doors, the kids can hear their grandma going bump in the night in the most worrying ways.)

As for Pop-Pop, a question mark hovers over the small white plastic bags he keeps putting in a nearby woodshed.

Even in his heyday, M. Night Shyamalan was a one-twist wonder when it came to whacking audiences with a sledgehammer of suspense.

Nothing much has changed in The Visit.

However, while this is very much a B-movie in both scale and style, it could not have executed any better. And it is all due to the solid (and surprisingly unpretentious) effort Shyamalan delivers here.

Originally published as Be afraid, The Visit is a seat-squirming thriller you’ll really enjoy