Society often views anger as an unacceptable emotion, and people often process it as something else — depression, apprehension, self-loathing. Experiences that result in anger also dilute the desire to try something new, particularly relationships. M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit shows from the first person perspective two teenagers’ attempt to open themselves up. They feel ready and excited to meet a set of grandparents they never have before.
However, spending time with them also means building bridges between them and their mother who left them at a very young age for the children’s father. The anger between them has never been settled, which must be dealt with to form a healthy bond, as well as the anger between the kids and their own father who recently abandoned them.
These complicated family dynamics surrounding anger, its growth into separation, and the forgiveness needed to reconcile potentially the most important relationships in a person’s life manifest itself in several different ways throughout The Visit. This includes the movie’s form, a rare side effect of a common condition and an unhealthy obsession with cleanliness, which all found their beginning in the characters’ refusal to accept the past.
Documentary
The older sister, Becka (Olivia DeJonge), decides to record and eternalize her and her brother Tyler’s (Ed Oxenbould) first meeting with their maternal grandparents. She studies film and thinks this is the perfect opportunity to solidify a family story while capturing this exciting life event. Thus, the mode of storytelling is set.
Shyamalan uses the documentary style effectively for this account. Interview setups hold attention to the exposition scenes while Becca attempts to get the answers about her family she seeks. The plot itself has holes, but the first person perspective helps the viewer suspend disbelief for a bit longer.
Becca has never tried filmmaking before, and it is something she only started after her dad left. She developed the passion and project for herself, which expanded her confidence. In an attempt not to let their father’s absence define her life, Becca promises to exclude any footage from her and Tyler’s childhoods that includes their dad. She shows her anger the best way her personality allows — perpetuating his nonexistence. Including him would mean he is a part of her new project in some way, which would feel like a failure.
Throughout the movie, it becomes more apparent Becca uses a harsh eye while self-evaluating. She is both angry and depressed that their father abandoned them for someone else, drawing blame from past memories when she acted less than perfect. She fails to gather enough courage to forgive herself. Instead, she refuses even to look in the mirror. At one point, Tyler interviews Becca, putting her in front of the camera. She is clearly uncomfortable, and he confronts her:
You think you’re worthless, admit it.
He notices the way she treats herself. Not wanting to admit her low self-confidence, she tries to brush him off. Tyler then points out her sweatshirt is on inside out, which she could have avoided by looking in the mirror.
Shooting the movie as a documentary, particularly as one in production, does more than show the characters’ emotions in real time. Their eyes fill with fear as their grandmother plays hide and seek with them underneath the house, but The Visit is not a found-footage horror movie. Since Becca produced the footage, it is the product of the tapings The documentary style shows her dealing with the past nearly in real time by interviewing those she loves about their family’s issues, eliminating the problematic separations in her and her brother’s lives.
At the end of the movie, Becca’s mom stresses she “not hold on to anger.” She decides to give up the self-blame after “the visit” puts things in perspective. Becca forgives her father, as seen by his inclusion in the “final” documentary.
Shyamalan illustrates a particularly violent and scary version of this common symptom of Alzheimer’s. The filmmaker purports that her sadness, guilt, and anger have driven her crazy over the years.
Nana (Deanna Dunagan) is angry about what she did. She’s angry at her situation, angry at her condition and angry she’s crazy. Nana and Pop-pop (Peter McRobbie) never forgave themselves for their horrible acts or anyone else for anything done against them. Instead, Nana made up delusional stories about alien creatures and blamed them.
While sitting in a rocking chair, laughing at the wall, she
tells Becca, “You have to laugh to keep the deep darkies in a cave.”
At one point, Pop-pop tells the kids Nana never got the chance to be a grandmother, and he wanted to give it to her. That came with a steep price: the murder of the kids’ real grandparents. Nana drives Becca to process her emotions in a healthy manner as opposed to holding them in with the potential to hurt someone undeserving.
Before deciding that forgiveness would be healthy for her mental state, Becca sought to make amends between her mom and grandma. While interviewing Nana, Becca gets her to say, “I forgive you, little girl,” which she calls “the elixir.” She wants her mom to say the “magic words” back to her grandma. At the end of the film, Becca’s mom tells her, “I know you were trying to get me forgiveness. You didn’t have to do that. It was there whenever I wanted it.”
The sundowning pushed her mom’s situation past the point of grabbing forgiveness, and that’s the point: Don’t let the sun set.
Germs
Tyler developed a paranoia of germs and bacteria after his father left, his own way of pushing that anger into another set of unhealthy quirks and personality traits. The movie draws a direct line between the phobia and fecal matter on multiple occasions.
Pop-pop suffers from incontinence and wears adult diapers. Tyler, unfortunately, finds used ones while exploring the property. Pop-pop makes him feel guilty by saying, “You must be disappointed in your grandparents. Ruining things. We’re really trying.” Tyler regrets making his grandfather feel that way because Tyler felt like his own dad would be disappointed in him. Tyler also blamed himself for their dad leaving after “ruining things” when he froze up under pressure during a peewee football game.
Tyler freezes up again when Pop-pop loses control over his mental state. He believes he “put a spell” over Tyler to make him stand still. Pop-pop threatens Tyler before demeaning him and throwing a used diaper in his face. However, that is Tyler’s breaking point. He faces his bad memories and breaks the “spell” by tackling Pop-pop to fight for his life. Ultimately, Tyler gets the chance to try again.
Becca and Tyler allow forgiveness to answer some of the significant open-ended questions in their life, and although traumatized, that brings them peace. While the poop jokes and a middle schooler rapping are cumbersome, the message of the movie is an essential life lesson: Face the past to live in the present.
