Critic Reviews for The Visit on Moviebuff.com

With 'The Visit', Shyamalan has delivered a delicious horror gem so intense that you may accidentally rip the armrests off your seat from clenching them so hard

David Blaustein, ABC News

With the clever, cheeky and only slightly scary horror film 'The Visit', though, Shyamalan has returned to his early-2000s groove

Cary Darling, The Columbus Dispatch

The secret of 'The Visit', reduces everything to a campfire story

Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

'The Visit', is consistently entertaining even though an uneven middle act drags with weak characterization, but it’s still good enough to make you see dead people

Josh Cabrita, The Young Folks

'The Visit', doesn’t seem concerned with living up to those expectations - there’s no mistaking this for a Spielbergian tale - and it’s a fresher story for it

Bryan Bishop, The Verge

'The Visit', a hackneyed horror-thriller whose scares are few and problems are many

Sean P Means, The Salt Lake Tribune

'The Visit', is great fun, it’s genuinely funny while still managing to tap into our dark fears of the familiar becoming terrifyingly unfamiliar, of sweet turning suddenly sour

Lucy O Brien, IGN

'The Visit', is more concerned with insidious ideas and eerie sights than outright terror

Eric Walkuski, JoBlo.com

'The Visit', is a well-developed and well-crafted piece of classic suspense which continually undercuts its own belief in itself

Joshua Starnes, ComingSoon.net

'The Visit', a pseudo-horror schlock-fest with shaky hand-held camerawork that exhibits next to no evidence of the filmmaker behind the above turn-of-the-century suspense stunners, he’s officially run out of credit

Edwin Arnaudin, The Citizen Times

Very worthy of a wink and a nod

Brooke Corso, The Monitor

'The Visit', is sufficiently sophisticated to frighten kids 14 and under, but an older audience will perhaps ask questions causing the story to break down long before the revelation meant to be shocking

Tahoe Daily Tribune Source, Tahoe Daily Tribune

As is not always the case with modern scare-fests, there’s nothing dank or slash-y about this one, it’s a lot of fun

Kurt Loder, Reason

'The Visit', is horror for lazy marks and comedy for people who wish there were more funny films about Alzheimer’s

Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects

Shyamalan's film is ostensibly made entirely of footage shot by DeJonge's character, but there's more to it than the hand-held camerawork

Mike Scott, New Orleans Los Angeles News

This "found footage" thriller is an improvement, the story is relatable and not too crazy

Joanne Soh, The New Paper

This time I will make the obvious joke – You should pay this movie a “Visit”.

Bob Garver, The Waunakee Tribune

'The Visit', should be considered a winning comeback for Shyamalan; the twist is dumb fun and audiences are going to have a blast being simultaneously frightened while laughing at the lunacy of it all

Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth

'The Visit', an amusingly grim fairy tale has the virtue of simplicity and familiarity, Mr. Shyamalan keeps it streamlined and simple

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

'The Visit', probably succeeds better as a comedy than a horror film

Al Hoff , Pittsburgh City Paper

'The Visit', a horror-thriller that turns soiled adult diapers into a motif

Sheri Linden, Yahoo News

Dull, derivative and flatly unscary, i’m afraid I see only a dead career

Mike McCahill, The Guardian

'The Visit', probably succeeds better as a comedy than a horror film

Al Hoff , Pittsburgh City Paper

Nothing happens in 'The Visit', - it’s just that nothing interesting or cohesive happens, and It’s a trainwreck

Mike Reyes, Cinema Blend

Classical storytelling and visual values, resulting in a refreshing genre piece, premised almost entirely on a child’s willingness to accept grown-up weirdness as long as it ensures stability

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club

Here’s to M. Night Shyamalan reclaiming his audience with a film about which they’ll feel discomfited and entertained rather than visited upon

Bill Wine, CBS Local

A couple of awkward soul-baring monologues, and a ludicrous epilogue that presumes auds will have somehow formed an emotional bond with characters who actually remain skin-deep throughout

Geoff Berkshire, Variety

We bounce back and forth between moments of goofiness and moments of tension, and 'The Visit', abandons all pretense of comedy and slight discomfort

Ben Gruchow, Box Office Prophets

It's a blend of mirth and malice that combines Grimm fairy tales with the found-footage gimmick of Paranormal Activity

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

If adults want to keep their kids excited about spending a weekend with their grandma and grandpa, I recommend they keep them away from this movie

Barry Wurst, Maui Time