The Visit, directed by M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, The Visit, compares favorably to his more successful efforts, The Sixth Sense, and Unbreakable, though it is a bit of a departure from those two earlier films.

The basic plot is a teenaged sister and brotherr, Becca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) are sent to visit their grandparents by their mom, (Kathryn Hahn), while mom takes a trip with her boyfriend. Since mom has been estranged from her parents for years, the two kids have never seen their grandparents, and know very few details about them.

Of course, all sorts of strange things happen, and the suspense builds until the kids find out exactly what is really going on. The film is presented as a documentary filmed by Becca, who is a budding filmmaker, and that is something you'll need to keep in mind as you watch it.

Like The Sixth Sense, there is a twist that will change the context of the story. Unlike that other film (which is on my list of all-time favorite movies, btw), the twist here is quite sinister. The Sixth Sense is an even better movie if you see it while knowing the surprise at the end. I'm not sure I can watch The Visit again, knowing what's really happening.

Shyamalan made some odd choices as far as his staging goes--many of his shots have all of the activity in the shot going on to the left of the screen, with nothing at all on the right. I'm sure this was deliberate, and possibly it was his way echoing what was going on in the plot--by the end of the film staging was a lot more traditional, and we also know a lot more of what was going on with the story.  I'm sure that the conceit that it was supposedly shot by an amateur filmmaker had some bearing on it as well.

Performances were solid all around, and the film has the look you would expect from Shyamalan, with a gorgeous color palette and interesting contrasts. There are plenty of shocks and scares, and, while the ending isn't quite as satisfying as I'd like, it was still wrapped up nicely.

I'd recommend it. See it, at least once.

On a side note--I was a bit disconcerted, during the previews, at the number of movies that were "based on a true story." I find those incredibly tedious. I don't mind films based on true stories per se; it's when they are marketed that way that I find them annoying. Why? Because an awful lot of people forget about the "based on" part and just assume that every shot, every word of dialog, every bit of action, is what really happened. Uh, no. Don't ever use a narrative film to help you decide how you feel about a historical event, because chances are an awful lot of it was just made up to fit whatever narrative the filmmaker wanted to relate.

Okay, those are my thoughts about The Visit. Have you seen it? If you did, what did you think?

How to eat an elephant

I've made some personal decisions over the past week or so that I'd like to share here.

After going through a good bit of personal struggle, I've decided that I'm just going to give up writing fiction. There are reasons for this decision that I'm not going to go into right now, but it's the best way for me to go.

I'm going to concentrate on films now. For the next few months I'll be working on writing screenplays and treatments. During the next year or so I'm going to begin accumulating the equipment and software I'll need to start shooting and producing my own films.

Which means I'm about to get into directing, which is something I have no clue how to do. I'm going to start small, maybe shooting a short film or a music video or something, and hopefully work my way up to bigger stuff.

Until I start investing in this rather expensive new hobby, though, I'm going to educate myself as much as I can.

I've got a lot to learn. I don't have a great deal of time. Most people who get into this do so when they're a lot younger than me--most filmmakers at my age at least have a ton of short films under their belts by now. I'm going to take it a little at the time. I used to have a manager at my day job who was fond of saying, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at the time." Which means, even if the task is monumental, it can be done if you just break it down into smaller, more manageable, tasks.

For example--I'm working on a screenplay for a crime drama, and the plot is going to be a bit complicated. There's a mystery at the heart of the story and those are always tricky.

So, I started by breaking it down into broad, basic statements that outline each act. Then, I develop each of those a little more, giving a bit more info, and going into some detail about the ending. This is the treatment, and having the basic outline is very helpful. Just remember not to go into too much detail unless you must--you need to spell out the ending because that's what any producers who are interested in the project will want to see, but a lot of the smaller details of the plot can be referenced broadly or even omitted entirely.

To give you an example, here's my own outline for a movie I know you're familiar with, my personal all-time favorite, Alien:

• Act I: The commercial towing vehicle Nostromo lands on the planetoid LV-426 to investigate the origins of an alien radio transmission. One of the crew is infected with a parasite. Back on-board the ship, the parasite erupts from the crewmember and escapes onto the ship.
• Act II: the parasite has grown to enormous proportions, and it begins grabbing members of the crew and taking them away for reasons unknown.*
• Act III: Warrant Officer Ripley escapes the Nostromo using the emergency shuttle, and blows up the Nostromo in the process, after the creature kills the two other remaining crewmembers..
• Act IV: Unknown to Ripley, the parasite has taken refuge on the shuttle, too. She manages to expel it. She makes an entry into the shuttle's log before climbing into the stasis tube to go back to suspended animation and hope someone finds the shuttle.

See? Of course, there's a helluva a lot more than that, but this is a pretty decent summation, I think. Now you can take each act and expand it, giving more detail, working out the plot. It should be no more than a page or two when you're done. Then, you start writing the thing itself, where you finally start worrying about the details, but only for the particular piece you're doing.

Easy peasy, right? Well, it helps. I'll be taking the same approach toward learning my new hobby, directing, too. One bite at a time.

So, that's what's going to be eating up all my time and money over the foreseeable future.

*To get a pretty good idea what the xenomorph actually did to Dallas and Brett see Ridley Scott's 2003 director's cut. You owe it to yourself.