What do you get when you mix a touching family movie with a horror comedy movie?

A disaster.

The Visit is a found footage movie about two children, thirteen-year-old germaphobe and wannabe rapper, Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), and fifteen-year-old aspiring film maker, Becca (Olivia DeJonge), who visit their grandparents (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) for the first time. At first everything seems normal, but soon their grandparents start acting strange. At first, the kids believe their grandparents’ explanations for their weird behavior, but soon their behavior turns deadly and they become skeptical.

The movie’s biggest problem is that it tries to be too many things at once. Scattered throughout the film are touching family moments, which seem out of place and quite random in the suspenseful film. While it helped character development, it was more of a useless subplot rather than a contribution to the overall film. The comedy in the movie also tends to take away from a suspenseful moment, immediately making what was once an exciting scene less tense.

For a movie marketed as a horror movie, the actual horror scenes were not scary. The “horror” is instead loud jump scares: the grandma appearing out of nowhere running down the hallway, the grandpa appearing out of nowhere in the basement. It might be shocking at first, but it’s not going to keep you up at night, wondering if that strange noise was a serial killer, what if there was something hiding in your closet or under your bed?

The explanation of the grandparents strange behavior and motivations of the antagonists is briefly explained at the climax of the film. And by briefly, I mean two lines in the last twenty minutes of the movie explains the motivation, but even then, if you were digging around the popcorn bag, you would have missed it. Even after the brief explanation, there are still many unanswered questions.

However, the acting in this movie is excellent. Using child actors is often risky, but Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould have put in an incredible performance. Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie, who play the grandparents, are also very convincing. The overall cast are all excellent actors.

While The Visit has a lot going against it, it’s not terrible. The horror movie is funny and the jump scares will give you a rush of adrenaline, but I wouldn’t spend money on it. Instead, wait for it to come out on Netflix.