James Bond relies on a peaceful world.

Which is a strange statement to make, considering the amount of bloodshed that goes on in those movies but here I am saying it. Now, let me explain.

James Bond hardly ever takes on the real dangers of the world. He doesn't fight religious extremists, guerilla factions or whatnot. Even when you look at the films during the cold war era James Bond never truly fights the Russians. He fights corrupted Russians in From Russia with love (working for SPECTRE) and Octopussy (a power-hungry general). But never truly the Communists. More so, the understanding between Bond and the Russian boss of the KGB always remained rather cheerful -for example the ending of For your eyes only: "Now neither of us got it." Resulting in a laughing fit from England's mortal enemy.

So James Bond never really delves deep into the world's problems. It touches on it (e.g. the idea of paying for water in Quantum of Solace which happened in real life. Sufficient to say the people didn't agree with it.) but never fully 'take it on'.

So Bond-movies have to create their own villains. Naturally, for moviemakers, this is the safe bet. The villain -in this case- is truly a villain because they don't represent reality. But, by creating these villains -I argue- one can state that the fictional world Bond resides in is actually rather peaceful. The only extremists are the villains, nobody else. otherwise Bond would have been forced to focus his attention on that. He doesn't. Dressed as a duck in Goldfinger he detonates a villain's lair.

It's a black and white world and as such a peaceful world apart from the few random villains that go about firing laser beams.

Tom Cruise movie posters

Every once in a while there are some problems with movie promotion in Hollywood. This happens since (A) movie promotion is a standardized business and (B) there are a heck of a lot of movies to promote.

So for starters there are the bad -BAD- Photoshops. These are always fun. Now it isn't always the American company who makes these bad 'shops' it is often the case that some foreign company tries its hand at this magical thing called 'pheutoshoop' and that's when the fun happens.

 

Take for instance this current favorite of mine of the Mexican movie poster of the movie Chef. Great Sunday-afternoon movie, fascinatingly bad Photoshop. I love every horrid detail of it.

Then there are the standardized photo shops. For Example: floating heads, add sparks, orange versus blue (these are well known thropes). The cliché are obvious. Which brings me to my personal favorite: the: 'put Tom Cruise in the centre looking constipated'-poster.

This poster for Jack Reacher. The only thing I learn from this picture is that Tom Cruise is angry and he has a gun. What the movie turns out to be is a rather more sophisticated crime-thriller. True, Tom gets angry and he uses his gun but -to be honest- this poster could just as easily have been used for MI4, or whatnot.

And that's basically the problem with promotional poster for Tom Cruise movies. It  focusses far too much on 'Tom Cruise' rather than what the movie is about.

Take Up in the air for instance. It's a movie with George Clooney, but what the poster tells us is that the movie is about a guy (centered) on an airport. No explosions so it's probably a drama. Simple, now we know what we are going to see.

Which brings me to the next little Tom Cruise-y issue I want to raise. The movie Edge of tomorrow. For starters, this is, without a doubt the worst title ever. Better to call the movie ON the edge of tomorrow. Or use the new title Live, die, repeat. Edge of tomorrow is a deadpan title that tells the audience nothing. Up in the air -again- at least tells the audience that it's about something 'unattainable' (and showing an airport certainly helps).

But the biggest problem with the promotion of Edge of Tomorrow is that it shows Tom Cruise in a big mechanical suit, Emily Blunt holding a big sword and...nothing else. And, the fun part is, the mechanical suits are just a gimmick in the movie. They are not really that important when you get down to it. The promoters would have done brilliantly if they skipped Tom Cruise from the poster (or maybe just showed his floating head) and settled on something 'time-travelly' or something to draw the audience into the story instead of Tom Cruise. Because, selling this movie as a Tom Cruise action movie is truly undeserving to the story of the movie.

The promotion company (or the producers giving the orders) figured promoting Tom Cruise would be enough to get those theater seats filled. They were wrong. People, nowadays, want more (the same goes for Jack Reacher). 

A poster I really liked in its simplicity is the one for the (foreign) film Embarazados. Now, I don’t know anything about it apart from the poster (plus I actually try not to find out more about this movie until next year when I'm going to see it on demand -since I'm writing about it, it's the least I can do.).

Let's start with what I disliked. Those little 'swimmers' going at the letter 'O'. It's a bit much, I'm a reasonably clever guy I got most of the gist of the plot from the rest of the poster. Because the poster is brilliant as it shows just enough of what you need to know. Guy and girl. My mind immediately screams: 'couple'. And then the shadows. She's pregnant and he's running.  That's all we need. So we've got a comedy (dark drama's don't often use caricatural shadows) about pregnancy. She's probably okay with it, he's probably terrified. Simplicity itself. It brings the message across not by spelling it out, but by allowing us to connect the dots. 

In my, humble,opinion Tom Cruise-movie-poster-makers should learn from this simple example. It is far smarter and better to put forwards what the movie is first, then show your trump card that is Mr. perfect teeth. Thank goodness the people of MI5 learned from Edge of Tomorrow's mistake. Big plane, guy dangling from it, looks interesting, looks actiony - oh heck, that's Tom Cruise!

House of cards and Shakespeare

I liked the first two seasons. It was truly a take on Richard III (including Shakespearean speeches to the audience).*

Season 3, however, I didn't really like -like many others on the Internet (no point being different all the time). 

It's still Shakespearean but now it's 'the Scottish play' complete with Lady Macbeth going slightly mental when she has the power.

I always jokingly refer to Shakespeare as a fan fiction writer. The minute a fan fiction writes has reached his or her goal (shipping characters together or whatnot) there aren't any goals anymore and the story becomes boring.

Shakespeare solved this quite easily in a lot of his work by using a handy tool called ‘death’: Hamlet wants revenge, the minute he has it he dies. Macbeth and Richard III want the crown the minute they got it they get overthrown and die.

Now, Shakespeare could have easily have ended the story the minute Richard III got the crown. But that wouldn't give the audience a sense of justice.

House of cards suffer the same 'fan fiction' problem. Frank Underwood now has the crown. The audience is now waiting for his comeuppance.

Every story with a goal set in stone at the very beginning should end the minute that goal is reached (That's why the Walking Dead -or any soap opera- is such a safe bet. The goal is to survive -and they'll never reach that.). The longer it is going to take for Frank Underwood to pay the piper the more boring the show will become. So it’s time for the show runners to start introducing some real potential MacDuff’s to thwart him.

*Now I'm not trying to be all clever. There are more then enough people online claiming the same.

Random musings

Just some random thoughts about popular movies for which I'm too lazy to write whole articles around. 

Into the woods

Into the woods begins with the song into the woods. It takes the actors fifteen minutes of singing into the woods before they finally get into the woods and spent the remainder of the movie into the woods whilst you are desperately waiting for them to get out of the damn woods!








The Terminator chase

The original two (three) Terminator movies where all about a superior killer robot that would stop at nothing chasing our heroes -and was, in fact, very hard to destroy. Much in the same vein as the slasher-horrors of the eighties with their Michael Myers, Jashon Voorhees and others.
So what I don't understand is why in the following sequels the moviemakers opted for less chase and more universe building and action. Blowing stuff up isn't the same as feeling stuck in a cat-and-mouse game. In the new terminator-movies they've taken away the thriller element in favor of the flashy-lights-explosions. Too bad.

Peter Pan problem

Every Peter Pan movie since the Disney animation has flopped at the box office (the 2003 version, Hook, ao). Even the live-television version this year (with the great Christopher Walken) didn’t get the best reviews. The only recent movie that was somewhat of a critical success was Finding Neverland - about the writer of Peter Pan (J. M. Barrie). So why does the entertainment industry keep trying?

BTW - Hollywood, if you wish to do something fun with the Peter Pan story, make a movie based on the book The Child Thief by Gerald Brom. But, just humor me, don't make the movie as bloody as the book is...because it really is rather messed up.

I do like the motivation the writer gave for this bloody version of the Pan-saga. He explains that the original unedited version of the Pan story by J. M. Barrie was far more cruel than we remember it nowadays.




Things I don't want to hear in behind-the-scenes interviews anymore! 

I know movies have to be promoted. And yes you wish to win over your audience. But sometimes it would be nice if the following few standardized sentences didn't happen in those behind-the-scenes interviews anymore:

"This has never been done before."
"The most exciting time of my life."
*(girl) actress has a giggly fit.*
"He was the best director I ever worked with."
"He/she was great/awesome/wonderful/sweet."
"The most special effects ever put on film before."
"We had to do it for real!" 

Sometimes I long for something like the Marnie-trailer in which Hitchcock basically takes the p*ss out of his own movie.

Find the bunny game

After I made that little Monty Hall-problem game I felt inspired to refresh my skills a bit. so I decided to make a little children's game, nothing fancy, it's for the one-maybe- two year olds and after that it gets boring fast.

UPDATE: it appears that Firefox and flash had a marriage dispute (and forgot to tell the kids) so some people can’t see the flash file. But, you can download it HERE.

 

Let’s talk zombies

Zombies are all the rage right now- those slow growling reanimated former-humans that can only be killed by destroying the brain. We’ve got The walking dead, Fear the walking dead, Word War Z (read the book, forget the movie) Dawn, Day, Diary and all kinds of dead rising. We’re overrun by zombies. But in this strange time where get our entertainment from apocalyptic visions of the reanimated deceased we tend to forget how important the zombie genre is for humanity. We generally (or at least the elite does) disregard the zombie-genre as humbug –often with a wonderment why people flock to this desire for the zombie-apocalypse.

If we’re going to go, we are going to go zombie-style

Let’s start with this one, our current fascination with the world falling apart. Be it by meteor, earthquake, solar-flares, aliens or –indeed- zombies, in the last twenty years we’ve seen the world being destroyed on a regular –summer blockbuster- basis. Why is our current time so preoccupied with the destruction of our world? 

Well, we aren’t. We’ve always been fascinated with the destruction of earth or death in general. In the fifties giant ants destroyed the world (and ‘normal’ aliens). In the late 1800s H.G. Wells destroyed the world. And before that we had organized religion telling us that our time here was temporarily. Across all cultures in all religions there has always been a sense that ‘one day’ it is all over.

Combine this with the realization we had in the last fifty years or so. Our world can end in the blink of an eye. We’ve pretty much let go of the biblical (I’m not too knowledgeable about the Koran or the other holy books) explanation that the world was created a mere four thousand years ago (on a Sunday). We learned that the world is millions of years older. And each time a new species of life evolved on the planet it was pretty quickly –on a geological timeline- destroyed once again by a meteor, volcanic eruption or whatnot. The ‘white cliffs of Dover’, all deceased ancestors if you will. So knowing –for a fact- that we can die any minute - be it by car accident, old age or something on a global scale- feeds our fascination with death in our popular culture as a means to ‘deal with it’. 

And then there’s science that can nowadays tell us for a fact that we are not alone in the universe; yet –due to the distance- we will probably never be able to visit the other inhabited planets. This increases our loneliness as a species. And from this comes the knowledge that if an aliens species would –hypothetically- visit our planet it would be like a man coming across a bunch of ants. This ‘man’ would neither be kind or cruel, just indifferent to us, much like the zombies. 

You see, zombies aren’t evil. They are predators that feel a need to feed.

So we’ve always had this fascination for death. But what makes zombies nowadays such a ‘preferred way to go’?

First and foremost, like aliens, we’ve got something of a fighting chance. A zombie is basically a man with cannibalistic tendencies. We wouldn’t be able to take on a tripod alien.[1] Let alone fight back against a volcano or meteor.

But zombies we can deal with. And those flesh-eating buggers also allow to have ‘some fun’ with the things we know. 

Men against zombie, men against men

Men has always killed men in the most varied ways possible. Just read any book about the inquisition or the holocaust and prepare to be fascinated about the sheer cruel imagination that people applied to destroy a fellow human being.

Why we do this? I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Thankfully we still live in a world where ‘being a murderer’ is considered a bad thing.[2]

Now, should I make an action movie and let the hero kill the villain in a spectacular fashion that’s fine. Just don’t overdo it because then the audience’s morality comes into play. The hero tosses the baddie out of the window of a skyscraper (or preferably –the Disney method- the villain causes his own demise). You can’t have the hero take his time to torture the villain because that would be inhumane and the audience would rebel against the hero. Yet, in zombie fiction, this happens all the time. The hero decapitates the zombie and –for good measure- stabs him in the eye. Why? Apart from that it looks cool on screen. The hero can kill something that looks human in the most brutal way possible because the zombie isn’t human. And thus the audience won’t feel sorry for the victim.

As a side note here is the rise of animal protection. We pretty much know most of the animals on the planet. We still distrust some (crocodiles, snakes, sharks) but overall accept them as animals on the planet. Partners on earth if you will. So yes –again the movie example- the hero can blow up the great white shark at the end of 'Jaws'. But don’t let this guy keep the teeth as a souvenir that’s tasteless. In the same sense, don’t kick a dog. But if it’s a zombie dog…

Because zombies don’t exist –and because they are already dead- we, the audience, feel no sympathy for them. Somehow –in this sense- it is (almost) better to see the hero mow down a hundred zombies than ten terrorists in 'Die Hard'.

True we are a bit abhorred when Daryl in ‘The Walking Dead’ makes a necklace out of zombie ears. But the last thing that crosses our mind is ‘aw poor zombie’. No, we’re wondering what the heck is wrong with him to make such a thing. But sympathy to the undead, no!

A good zombie fiction acknowledges this fact. Those stories play around with the -for instance- father character incapable of killing his zombie-son because it still resembles the boy it once was. Often the fiction punishes the father character by letting the zombie-boy eat him. Thus reestablishing the fact to the viewer that zombies aren’t people.[3]

The zombie fiction is one of the defining genres that spotlight this insane lust of us humans to kill on another. If there’s one thing the zombie fiction does well is that it brings society down to the core. Governments fall like flies. People whose moral-compass has problems killing those former humans often follow the government soon after. Should the zombie apocalypse happen then the entirety of humanity is brought back to ground level. Whether you are the president or a homeless-person. And from this ‘ground level’ the fiction examines how your character deals with the situation. In short the zombie fiction is the ultimate democracy. All men being equal (ly delicious).

Those who survive, however, have to worry about more than just the zombies.

Tossing several characters in a zombie apocalypse and suddenly the main danger isn’t the zombies with their one-point-agenda of eating you but your fellow man with several agendas. The zombie fiction in its core allows this –nee, demands- this to happen. Zombie fiction is a magnifying glass on human nature. Take away the safety and all human’s real character start to rise.

The zombie fiction plays around with this not because it has any intention of putting the heroes on a pedestal but because it wants to show the truth of those humans left behind in the dead world. And it is often the case that those humans are far worse than the zombies outside.

Zombie religion

Another way to look at zombie fiction is a result of the release of organized religion. In the last hundred years Christian religion in the western world lost a lot of its footing. Science grew, knowledge grew. People started to wonder whether everything the church told them was accurate. And –let’s be honest- it was about time. Now I’m not saying that God does not exist. Being agnostic is a great way to live. Questioning organized religion doesn’t automatically makes you an atheist.[4] You just wonder whether those people in the church were actually doing God’s work or whether they were making things up along the way to serve their own human needs.

Religions all over the world have spoken of a life after death or even resurrection. Jesus of Nazareth came back to live. So did Osiris, Dionysus and countless others.

The Bible even speaks of the dead rising from their graves at the end of times. Again this aforementioned apocalyptic interest. The zombie fiction –I argue- herein is a way of dealing with seventeen hundred years of scripture.  What would it be like if the rapture came? What would it look like? Would those left behind really lie down and roll over? Or would we fight back the undead hoard?

For hundreds of years we’ve been told in religion that resurrection is possible. Zombie fiction takes this tale by the hand and whist showing it what it would look like also criticizes organized religion a bit.

Zombie parody

Talking about criticism. The zombie genre is filled to the brim with critique and parody. Something as silly as the dead rising from their graves and attacking human beings is a fantastic way of spotlighting the weird ways of contemporary life in western civilization.[5]

Sheep for the slaughter. 

‘Shaun of the dead’[6] starts off by showing Shaun as an everyday workingman in a bus with all kinds of other everyday workingmen (and women) all staring solemnly into the distance not a single dream or life-ambition left. They are all already zombies; they just haven’t been bitten yet.

Consumerism and capitalism. 

The western civilization (especially during the cold war) relished in the idea that ‘you are what you own’. Buy now, pay later (buy, buy, buy). Naturally this was the culture of those days to counter the Soviet idea of Communism (share, share, and share).[7] But it is something that stuck with us for all those years.

There’s a reason why ‘Dawn of the dead’ takes place in the mall. The critique is that we are all mindless consumers who only value life by possession. Throw a few zombies in the mix and all life’s possessions become meaningless.[8]

Zombie apocalypse 1500 likes.  

In ‘Diary of the dead’ the zombie fiction highlights the current focus to record everything. We do it on our smart phones nowadays. Shooting everything and sharing it with the world. Basically, the phone couldn’t care less who is recording and that’s the interesting part of the movie. The main character is the video camera. The characters holding the camera all shoot the film to give their own life meaning. But the camera could be held by anybody. Its purpose is for the greater good/ the hoard of humans. So diary of the dead slyly points at the fact that we humans aren’t much different than the zombies. Again, it doesn’t matter who holds the camera we’re all the same. And the movie criticizes our need to be special. Our need to share with the world our little insignificant lives (like this blog :-)). Because, let’s be honest, on a geological scale we don’t matter. 

Oooo…what does this button do? 

A final aspect that returns often enough is our meddling with science. I’ve already argued that the zombie fiction is a bit of a critique against organized religion. But that doesn’t mean that science is the ‘to-go-to-good-guy’. ’28 days later’ (not really zombies but still), ‘resident evil’ and ‘I am legend’ all warn against meddling with science because you might unleash something you can’t control, like the zombies. The zombie fiction doesn’t discriminate in its critique.

To sum up: The next time your parents or teacher tells you that zombie fiction is a bad thing, remind them: zombie fiction asks us directly to think about science, religion, morality, society, consumerism, individualism and our own mortality. Heck, even Moby Dick only managed two of those.

---

[1] I honestly believe H. G. Wells painted himself in a corner in his book ‘The war of the worlds’ and decided on the flu as a efficient trick to get out of it. 
[2] You wouldn't believe it if you watch the news. 
[3] In the remake of ‘Dawn of the dead’ the director took this idea that zombies aren’t human a step further by showing us a zombie baby thus blurring this line between sweet and horrific (like a baby tiger and a baby tarantula). 
[4] Though some can't seem to grasp that... 
[5] Or older civilizations when you look at Pride and Prejudice and zombies. 
[6] A parody of the zombie genre which –I thus argue- is in itself a parody. 
[7] …or else. 
[8] Also fun to note that the mall was one of those places people strangely enough felt safe.

The Visit: Review (and a little rant against zero-points voters)

I like the movie the Visit. It is a great little thriller-comedy from M Night Shyamalan that doesn’t pretend that it is more than it is. However, I noticed –whilst preparing for this article- that a lot of the negative reviews are pretty petty. There are basically four categories you can place these reviews in:

1. People who (with a vengeance) dislike found-footage movies.

2. People who were expecting a blood-soaked horror-movie.

3. People who have developed such an unrestrained hatred against the director that the guy –basically- can’t make them happy ever again.

4. "Oh no, not another twist-ending".

Now, I’m absolutely fine if one of these four arguments are reason enough for you to dislike the film. What I don’t understand, however, is why somebody would therefore rate a movie with the absolute minimum of one star out of ten on imdb.com?

I mean there are hardly any movies in the world worthy of one star. Let alone that there are movies in the world worthy of ten stars (I equally distrust those review). So I think those reviews automatically disqualify themselves by being too harsh/pathetic in their judgment.  There are some reviews that rate this movie with three or four stars and even though I don’t fully agree with their arguments I can at least accept and respect it. Now, before I delve into my own little review of the movie I want to tackle these aforementioned four points.

1. "I hate found footage movies".

For starters the Visit isn’t a found-footage film. But that’s an easy argument. The main critiques of these hand-held camera movies are (again) threefold: (1.) it’s been done to death by some abysmal movies. (2.) It is a cheap way for a movie studio to make a movie (“pull out your wallet and give us some real entertainment”-as it were). (3.) "Those shaky-cams make me sick".

Number three is simple, I never suffer nausea from watching shaky-cam films. But some people do. Now I understand the pain these people have when all they are offered are those shaky-cam films that they can't watch. But really, 'one star' because you don't like the presentation?

Has the found-footage genre been done to death? Yes. But I still like most of them and I never really saw one that I truly disliked because of the shaky-cam stuff. True, some movies could have been better if they just presented it as a ‘normal’ movie, but I honestly don’t mind if directors want to try something new.

The fact that shaky-cam-movies are tremendously cheap to make…well, I can’t really do anything but applaud it. Yes, the notion exists that movie-studios keep forcing those cheap movies down our throats. But, then again, the cheaper the movie the more freedom a moviemaker has to ensure his/her own vision. Remember, the average summer blockbuster film costs enough money to feed a small country. So naturally the movie studio has a lot of influence on the film. Making the cost of a movie cheaper allows more artistic freedom.

2. "The visit isn’t a blood-soaked horror".

No it isn’t. Somehow horror-fans (I’m one of them) have divided themselves in two groups. Group one believes a good horror is like Hostel and Saw (parts 3 to 7). Or: traps, chainsaws and all the bloody mess.  And group two who just wants a scary story. I’m group two.

The visit is a (slightly) scary story. But no it is definitely not horror in the first sense. Now, if you looked at the trailers you would have known that this is more a slow burn ‘ghost’ story than full-out nightmare fuel. So I basically blame the people who go to this movie expecting one thing but getting another. Do your homework and don’t blame the moviemakers on your mistake.

Sometimes, however, you are allowed to. Bridge to Terabithia was totally promoted as the next Chronicles of Narnia but turned out to be a (very) dramatic children’s/young adult movie. Yes, then you can rant.

3. "I hate the director".

This is something we can all understand.

But I honestly wonder; If this movie was made a few years back -(let’s say) right after Signs- I think people would have applauded him for another strong entry on M. Night's resume.[1][2]

But he didn’t. He made his bad quadrilogy (Avatar, Lady in the water, Happening and After Earth) in between. Three of those are high profile movies with a lot of studio influence. Lady in the water was his little pet project while he was fueled on arrogance and self-importance.[3]

Scorcese made a bad movie or two. Spielberg famously made 1941. But after that they were back in the game with a success. M. Night…took a while. Maybe he’s learned from past mistakes, maybe he hasn’t.

The problem is -after those bad movies: To a lot of movie lovers out there he’s become “The guy with the great ideas but with the terrible execution”.

Anyway, I think M. Night is way better off making smaller movies. He should stay very far away from those summer blockbusters because they don’t work for him. Producing movies like Devil –that’s what he should do.

Now, I must admit, I was rather amazed at how much I hated Lady in the water (still no one star though) and each time after that I gave him ‘another chance’, only to be disappointed.

Like the great stand-up comedian Bush once said: ‘fool me once…shame on you…fool me twice…’

I’m still willing to give second chances. But somehow I understand that M. Night has wasted his second chances with some people.

4. "The twist is bad so the movie is bad".

This is a weird (final) entry on the list. For starters I would argue that M. Night should stop using twists in his movies. He’s now pretty much gone down in history as the twist-guy (next to Chubby Checker). But the fun part is he did just this several movies ago. And besides, his movies are never just about the twist in the end. They are character studies every single one of them.

Moreover, the twist in the Visit isn’t really a twist at all (like the revelation at the end of Sixth sense or Unbreakable)[4]. Like M. Night knew that he should stop doing it. This ‘twist’ is a fact the characters learn along the way that increases the tension later on. People just assume it is M. Night, “so I’d better be looking out for a twist then”.

But still there are people who guessed this ‘twist’ early in the film. That’s fine. But does that make the movie a bad thing?

I mean, I guessed the trick of Christian Bale’s illusion in the Prestige early on. Does that make it a bad film? Nope. In fact, the prestige –to me- feels like Nolan telling me: 

NOLAN: “Great you figured out how this trick worked…good for you. Now how about this one (that fish tank-warehouse).”

ME: “Er…”

The same goes for ‘the Visit’. M. Night telling me:

M. NIGHT: “great, good, you guessed it. Now you understand what deep sh*t our characters are in.”

Is a detective story a bad story if I figured out who the killer is before the detective does? No, it’s part of the fun. When Poirot pinpoints the culprit and you find out that you were right all along you pat yourself on the shoulder. When you were wrong, well you might try to chicken out by saying that the clues were too hard to find or just accept it.

Why should I hate a twist-movie if it does exactly the same thing?

Now for my review:

Two siblings decide to let their mother take a holiday cruise with her new boyfriend whilst they stay at their estranged grandparent’s house in the country. For the older sister the perfect moment to apply her amateur filmmaking skills to reconnect these grandparents she never knew with her mother. But these grandparents are quite the quirky bunch and darkness ensues.

A lot of the positive reviews of the movie the Visit state that M. Night is reacquired his mojo/got his footing back/ is back at his former level or (the more conservative) is heading in the right direction.

I agree with the last one. I have to admit that M. Night has made so many bad films the last few years (one or two due to his own arrogance) that the stain isn’t erased that easily. But, like his story for the movie Devil, he appears to be heading in the right direction again. 

Now the big problem with M. Night’s failures was twofold. The big studio movies he made were not for him. He’s not the kind of guy to film clashing spaceships and water dancing bald-boys. Second, of all his failures it was the script that s*cked on an amazing level (nor can you get any believable performance out of the greatest of actors if they have to tongue-twist with atrocious dialog). The visuals were often fine.

The Visit is a fun ride mainly because of its outstanding cast. M. Night has always been a people’s director. Let him direct (and or write) two people in a room talking and the movie elevates.[5] 

And in the Visit the writing supports the actors to shine. The boy and girl protagonists really come across as brother and sister with a script that gives them emotional depth, fear and goofiness to play on.

The older actors (grandma and poppa) are equally impressive as the weirdest grandparents of them all. And even the small part for the mother shines as a woman who loves her children. This general affection is quite hard to fake when you look at movie-mothers in general. They usually act like babysitters waiting ‘till their boyfriends arrive. No, this mother cares for her children and makes the one logical deduction after the other.

Because that’s the second thing I like about this movie: the plot works like a charm. No silliness like the plants did it ([6]) or aliens invading that one planet with a high concentration of elements they are allergic to. No here the plot tells a simple a to z story and every action the kids take in this movie is logical. True, if you really put it under a microscope you will find some flaws, but (hey!) every script has flaws. Here the plot is well put together and topped off with a well written script with believable characters and workable dialog.

Now, I was a bit worried about the whole hand-held camera thing. But what I liked about this movie is that in both works in the story/plot as that it showcases M. Night’s skill as a director.

For the story it gives it a much needed mystery slash detective kind of vibe that helps the tension and the audacity. Plus it gives the audience a look into the mindset of the two main protagonists by interviews or general goofiness with a video camera.

On M. Night’s skill. Well he is a moviemaker in the traditional sense so he knows how to compose a shot. Now, instead of handing the camera to the actors to wave around all the time he places the camera somewhere strategic a lot of the time. Several times even, during the film, he pulls the trick by letting the camera be put down by a character randomly that –magically- creates the perfect composed shot to show the action. 

So no this isn’t a movie with shaky-cam and ten minutes of ceiling-shots. This is a movie that uses the hand-held camera device to get us even more connected with the characters and the story whilst composing great shots. And, of course, as it is almost a requirement for the found-footage genre (which again this movie isn’t) tension increases tenfold the minute a villain picks up the camera.

Is there anything bad to say about this movie, of course there is, it isn’t Lawrence of Arabia. Camera’s appearing out of nowhere. A finale that didn’t quite make it (I blame the lack of music but I’m still thinking about it…Maybe somebody cracks it). But if you accept it for what it is -a well made comedy/thriller– you will have a blast. 

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[1] A quick note about Signs. I honestly believe if he changed water into milk or something the movie would be considered a classic (or the popular theory of ’blessed water’).

[2] Also the fact that found-footage back then was still pretty much the hype. Those shaky-cam haters would be much more polite.

[3] Any movie fan should know the existence of this book by now: "The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale"

[4] A bit of movie trivia: M. Night –whist writing the Sixth Sense- only came up with the ‘twist’ ending after several drafts. He never set out to make a mind-f*ck of a movie. He just wanted to tell a story about a friendship between a psychiatrist (with mortal issues) and a boy.

[5] Much like Colin Trevorrow who’s Jurassic World –I argue- truly became his movie the minute there were no dinosaurs present, only two people talking. Once the dinosaurs were released the directing became a bit generic. The fact that the script didn’t really allow a lot of emotional depth is another story.

[6] I had to mention this hadn’t I.