Director – Justin P. Lange, Screenplay – Simon Boyes & Adam Mason, Producers – Paige Pemberton & Paul B. Uddo, Photography – Federico Verardi, Music – Gavin Brivik, Visual Effects – VFX Legion, ULC, Special Effects Supervisor – Mik Kastner, Production Design – Owl Martin Dwyer. Production Company – Blumhouse.
Cast
Finn Jones (Robert Burrows), Jessica McNamee (Maia Eden), Dane Rhodes (Pastor Joseph Ellis), Thomas Francis Murphy (Maxwell Braun), Donna Biscoe (Margaret Delacroix), Shanna Lynn Forrestall (Judy), Susan Schwam McPhail (Kathy)
Plot
Following the death of her father, Maia Eden moves back from London to her American home town of Briar Glen along with her British husband Robert Burrows. The two move in to the family home. Robert becomes concerned when he sees a portrait of someone that resembles him dating from the Civil War in the house. As Maia becomes pregnant, Robert finds other such portraits around the town and is told these are of Maia’s father Edgar Cardwell Eden, who is supposed to be the founder of the town. Because of his resemblance to Edgar, people everywhere begin to treat Robert with an unusual respect.
The Visitor was a production from Blumhouse, best known for the assorted Paranormal Activity, The Purge and Insidious films and the Halloween sequels, among others. (See below for Blumhouse’s other films). It was the third directorial film for Justin P. Lange who had previously co-directed the horror film The Dark (2018) and solo directed The Seventh Day (2021). The script comes from British director Adam Mason and his co-writer Simon Boyes who have delivered a reasonable body of works including Broken (2006), The Devil’s Chair (2006), Blood River (2009) and Songbird (2020), among others.
The Visitor starts interestingly. We are introduced to the town where the locals greet Finn Jones with fixed smiles and deference that seems off in some way. Now maybe a film about a guy discovering a portrait of himself from the past is nothing great as a horror movie premise goes – it feels far too much like the set-up for a 1970s/80s tv movie ghost story or a weepy romantic time travel film like Somewhere in Time (1980) – but I was willing to give the film some rope.
There is the odd jump but not many of them. I did like one where the mirror Finn Jones abruptly snatches the glasses of the other one, before it is revealed to be a hackneyed dream jump and Finn wakes up to find his glasses broken. (Although what did get me about the scenes is the fact that we next cut to Jessica McNamee several months more pregnant and Finn does not appear to have taken the time to replace his glasses where it seems that the snatching has apparently automatically corrected his vision as well).
Wife Jessica McNamee and husband Finn Jones move into a new home
The twist ending of the film [PLOT SPOILERS] feels like a variant on the town of Satanists plot that came in in a number of films in the aftermath of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) where towns are revealed to be run by cabals of Satanists – see the likes of Brotherhood of Satan (1971) and Race with the Devil (1975). To me, it felt like a damp squib letdown. I did however like the fadeout with the now satanically empowered Finn Jones driving off surrounded by hordes of admirers as he sets out to infect the world and the camera’s pan down into a painting that announces he has come to herald the End of Days.
The Visitor should not be confused with and is no relation to either the very strange Italian film The Visitor (1979) about Satan as an alien who gives birth to a very strange human daughter or the Roland Emmerich produced tv series The Visitor (1997-8) about a returned alien abductee.