Visitors is a hard, hard movie to enjoy. It's so slow and leaden in it's pacing that at times I was drifting off during the film. This was about 11AM on a hot, sunny day, I might add, not midnight on a cold winter evening, so you get an idea of just how slow this movie is.
Strange thing is, it's not long. At 100 minutes it's only ten minutes longer than the average straight to video, and it's only fifteen minutes longer than the superior Darkwolf that I'd quite happily watched the day before. It just drags an awful lot, enough for you to lose interest.
When it's not mistaking S-L-O-O-W development for atmosphere, Visitors is good enough at action to almost make it excusable how slowly things happen. While the flashbacks are both cheap and annoying as a way to round out Radha Mitchell's boats-woman, the hauntings/aliens/whatever are actually quite creepy and effective, especially when her suicidal mother turns up and starts groaning in the night. Full marks for not splurging make-up all over the shop too. The single person boat is a creepy place, and at times the movie uses the full power of the location and the deserted sea to scare the hell out of you.
Still though, I find it hard to recommend Visitors. I came out of it not only feeling like I'd just watched a 4 hour film, not a 100 minute one, but also feeling like I'd been cheated somehow, as while offering many explanations as to the hauntings (Mind games? Real ghosts? Space aliens?) Visitors doesn't pick one for definite. All that watching Radha Mitchell talk to her cat and Dominic Purcell smoulder for no obvious reason about some unexplained horrific event in the past, for nothing?. Say what you like about Shyamalan, but at least he tells you what happened, however crazy/stupid you might think it. If you don't watch a lot of these movies, your fresh perspective will probably improve matters somewhat, but I found this slow, boring and highly derivative. If you want to scare yourself silly there are much better places to do it, if you want a clever thriller there are many that are smarter.
Strange thing is, it's not long. At 100 minutes it's only ten minutes longer than the average straight to video, and it's only fifteen minutes longer than the superior Darkwolf that I'd quite happily watched the day before. It just drags an awful lot, enough for you to lose interest.
When it's not mistaking S-L-O-O-W development for atmosphere, Visitors is good enough at action to almost make it excusable how slowly things happen. While the flashbacks are both cheap and annoying as a way to round out Radha Mitchell's boats-woman, the hauntings/aliens/whatever are actually quite creepy and effective, especially when her suicidal mother turns up and starts groaning in the night. Full marks for not splurging make-up all over the shop too. The single person boat is a creepy place, and at times the movie uses the full power of the location and the deserted sea to scare the hell out of you.
Still though, I find it hard to recommend Visitors. I came out of it not only feeling like I'd just watched a 4 hour film, not a 100 minute one, but also feeling like I'd been cheated somehow, as while offering many explanations as to the hauntings (Mind games? Real ghosts? Space aliens?) Visitors doesn't pick one for definite. All that watching Radha Mitchell talk to her cat and Dominic Purcell smoulder for no obvious reason about some unexplained horrific event in the past, for nothing?. Say what you like about Shyamalan, but at least he tells you what happened, however crazy/stupid you might think it. If you don't watch a lot of these movies, your fresh perspective will probably improve matters somewhat, but I found this slow, boring and highly derivative. If you want to scare yourself silly there are much better places to do it, if you want a clever thriller there are many that are smarter.