3 stars (out of 5)
Writer/director/producer M Night Shyamalan has stated that his latest is intended as a mixture of horror and comedy, and it does have a strange, split personality, but it’s also surprisingly fun, pleasingly silly and kind-of-sort-of-maybe-perhaps-in-a-roundabout-way scary… but not really.
In what feels like the set-up to an urban legend we meet a pair of young siblings, Becca (Erica DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), who are setting off to holiday with the grandparents they’ve never met so that their Mom (Kathryn Hahn) can go on a cheesy singles cruise ship. Funny, uneasy bits of characterisation are introduced, especially Tyler’s would-be hip-hopping and jittery germ-phobia (a post-traumatic result of his absent Dad’s nasty departure), and then the kids get to the snowy rural home of Nana and Pop Pop (played by theatre stars Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie).
This is all depicted as a homemade documentary that Becca is putting together as it’s quite a momentous family event, given that Mom has been sadly alienated from her parents for 15 years or so, and the kids film themselves reacting with puzzlement at some of the odd ways in which the seniors behave, even though Mom (via Skype) tells them not to worry (“They’re just old”, she says, clarifying the movie’s cheerfully ageist subtext). But Nana and Pop Pop are pretty weird, what with their nighttime curfews, creepy games, nervous excuses, hushed whispers, something-nasty-in-the-woodshed secrets and tendency to not wear undies.
A curious beast, but a considerable improvement upon Shyamalan’s lengthy run of dismal disasters (After Earth, The Last Airbender, The Happening and The Lady In The Water), this has nice work from the kids (both of whom, incidentally, are from Melbourne) and broader, wackier playing from Dunagan and McRobbie, plus a fair helping of freaky, even ‘WTF’-type moments. And Shyamalan (please resist the urge to call him ‘Shyamalanadingdong’) wouldn’t be building us up to one of his notoriously whopper twists, now would he? Er… would he?
I Wake Up Screening 