Truly nothing escaped me about what to anticipate in "The Visitor," one of various Blumhouse horror pictures to have emerged as part of the Blumhouse Television and EPIX streaming deal. Almost from the start, I could tell where "The Visitor" was going yet how it got there really held my interest. Okay, a mildly enthused interest but an interest nonetheless.
A newlywed couple, Robert and Maia, arrive in a small, strange town where the bartender might be a little too friendly, the hardware store owner who is a little baffled by the husband, a local priest who might be a little too holier-than-thou with respect to the Bible, and there is a cliched town historian and so on. It turns out that one of the newlyweds, Robert (Finn Jones), is seeing himself in various paintings in their new home and in other people's homes. Each painting is inscribed with the title, "The Visitor" and some sort of cryptic phrase. It is not a matter of just bearing a similar likeness - Robert looks exactly like this Visitor. Robert's wife, Maia (Jessica McNamee), senses that he's getting paranoid and that it is a result of him continuing to take his anti-anxiety medication. Their history is marred somewhat by the loss of their baby due to a miscarriage. Yet they press on and she eventually gets pregnant and all hell breaks loose involving a snake shedding its skin, frogs, locusts, etc. Nothing here you haven't seen before.
"The Visitor" is still marginally effective and has a few jump scares that do work (no annoying zither music cues are used to highlight them) but what made the movie work is the decaying atmosphere, thanks to superb lensing by Federico Verardi (who also lensed the scary 2020 thriller "Alone"). There is a distinctly subtle muddy haze to this movie, intended or not, that embellishes the proceedings. The house they stay in doesn't feel safe (it is Maia's childhood home) and other places such as the interiors of an antique shop, the local church or the hardware store have a death-like feel to them. Also adding to the movie's frightful, unexpected conclusion is the solid work of Finn Jones (a face that is hard to forget that reminded me of Jude Law) and Jessica McNamee as the couple and the revelation of their past and future that comes as a real shock.
"The Visitor" starts off as a typical, cliched horror picture about apathetic town residents whose grins are a little too wide and where nothing is what it seems. As I mentioned earlier, the correlation between the paintings and Robert is none too surprising, at first. Once the story is really fleshed out and we arrive at the conclusion that I did not anticipate, I was taken aback. It is a dark, sick, often demonic and unsettling movie. Worth a visit.
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