Once upon a time, in a cinema far, far away, M. Night Shyamalan was considered one of the great modern filmmakers. With the ability to deliver amazingly original psychological thrillers such as “Unbreakable” and his 1999 debut hit “The Sixth Sense,” surely the writer-director’s success would continue into the 21st Century.

Then came a string of films that steadily went from bad to worse. “The Last Airbender” and “After Earth” remain his greatest disasters, as they destroyed Shyamalan’s reputation as a once great auteur and made critics and audiences alike dread announcements for what he would do next. 

Now he’s released what many have deemed his “comeback,” a return to from which would hopefully restore his once-held status. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call “The Visit” a major comeback for Shyamalan, this low-budget, found-footage horror film is certainly a step up from the director’s most recent works and does make for a decent matinee viewing. Just be prepared for the screaming teenagers in the audience. 

“The Visit” is at its core a modern retelling of a classic Hansel and Gretel story. We meet in the opening scene Paula (Kathryn Hahn), a single mother of two who married her English teacher right out of high school and who hasn’t talked to her parents since then. Now, however, her folks are eager to meet their grandchildren and invite them to stay at their house for a week while Paula goes on vacation. 

The daughter, Rebecca (Olivia DeJonge), is an aspiring filmmaker and uses the opportunity to make a documentary about her mother’s fractured relationship with her parents, thus providing Shyamalan with an excuse to implement the overused found footage style; all the while her wannabe-rapper brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) shoves his face in the camera every chance he gets. 

As is expected, the seemingly harmless Grandma Doris (Deanna Dunagan) and “Pop-Pop” John (Peter McRobbie) have a big secret. Initially spooking the children by doing things such as chasing them underneath the creaking floors of their backyard shed and mysteriously roaming the hallways at night, the elderly couple reveals their psychopathic nature by the end of the week, forcing Rebecca and Tyler to fight for their lives in a classically staged horror film climax.   

Whereas Shyamalan’s last few movies failed because they took themselves too seriously, “The Visit” fully recognizes and embraces its own ridiculousness, unabashedly playing on every cliché in the horror film handbook. There are the constant “Don’t go in there!” moments, the obligatory jump out of your seat close-ups of Grandma Doris violently shaking the camera, the dimly lit interiors and a blatant reference to “Psycho” toward the finale.  

Even without the screaming teenagers sitting behind me, the film by itself was enough to make me laugh, and not in the same way I laughed during “The Last Airbender.” Instead of laughing at how unbelievably terrible that film is, “The Visit” is the kind of campy horror that invites its audiences to laugh along with it. And if you don’t believe me, wait until you see what the kids find Grandma Doris doing in the middle of the night. 

Yet for all the time he spends paying homage to classic horror, I expected more from Shyamalan when it came to delivering a memorable twist in the third act. Especially considering that this was a central component of what defined his earlier works, seeing him build up the film to an overtly predictable conclusion was a major letdown. It’s further evidence that it wouldn’t hurt to pair himself with a talented screenwriter such as Alex Garland, rather than take it upon himself to write every one of his films on his own. Even great auteurs such as Scorsese and Ridley Scott almost always hire someone else to write their films. 

“The Visit” is far from a modern masterpiece for Shyamalan, but it does provide viewers with the hope that he still has the ability to deliver a visually enticing experience and a good amount of thrills and chills. Now, it’s just a matter of him being willing to collaborate with a skilled scriptwriter for the next one.