“The Visit,” is another entry in the growing list of M. Night Shyamalan – the director who made a name for himself with movies that had one big twist or one big reveal i.e. “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs” – disasters that was frankly not worth the effort of seeing. It’s dark, detached, derivative and dumb.

Granted, given my new living arrangements in Washington, D.C., seeing a movie is fair bit of work. It either involves a paid cab ride or, my preferred alternative, a mile and half walk. Last weekend I made that walk, in a very healthy dose of rain, to be very predictably bored out of my mind with “The Visit.”

The entire concept of this film is creepy stalker/demon-possessed/serial-killer/other-horror-film-antagonists that are old. That’s it. “The Visit” is, in many cases, a worse incarnation of any other interchangeable horror film/jump-scare-fiesta that swaps out the guy with the chainsaw for an elderly couple and the scantily-clad women for grandchildren. In absolutely every scenario I can imagine, those are terrible trades.

To be fair, the trademark M. Night Shyamalan “big reveal” is pretty good. That said, everything else about the film is weak sauce. It approaches the “found footage” cinematography style in the worst way. It doesn’t claim to be real, and forces its justification far past the breaking point. No one did the math on this movie before going into production. No one crunched the numbers and told the filmmakers that applying pressure to lever B will not make the scare factor on platform 934 rise higher – because they’re not connected.

2 of 6 stars