Visitors

While facing the challenge of sailing alone around the world in one hundred and forty days, the Australian Georgia Perry (Radha Mitchell) fights against the "ghosts" of her life in her loneliness, including an unresolved relationship with her mother and the engagement with her unfaithful fiancé.

"Visitors" was a great deception for me. Since "Pitch Black", I have been a fan of the actress Radha Mitchell and I have watched many of her movies. Therefore, I expected that "Visitors" would be a great film. Unfortunately, the confused screenplay, using flashbacks to explain the innermost contradictions and conflicts of the character Georgia Perry, begins with a great atmosphere and very intriguing, but does not work well and in the end makes the movie sometimes boring and messy. The idea is good, but the screenplay is horrible. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Visitors"

Georgia Perry (Radha Mitchell) is a determined woman who sets out to sail solo around the world. Along the way she's plagued by what could either be hallucinations or ghostly visitations. Georgia finds herself up against pirates, hordes of enormous spiders, and the specter of her insane mother (Susannah York).

All this, while Georgia carries on a two-way conversation with her cat.

This is one bizarre movie. Ms. Mitchell carries it all herself, and does an admirable job. Her character must face not only various phantoms, but also personal demons and debilitating guilt.

While the ending is rather hokey, it's an exhilarating ride getting there...

A fine cast, a cute cat, and a swell premise are given the further benefit of the involvement of director Richard Franklin and writer Everett De Roche, both of whom have proven themselves before. There are problems that start to rear their head kind of quickly, though, and what they all rather boil down to is that the pacing feels overly swift in every regard, and the movie at large is brusque and forced. These issues apply to Franklin's direction here above all but extend just as much to the writing (dialogue, characters, scene writing, narrative, use of flashbacks, and plot development), acting, editing, and cinematography. This would be troublesome no matter what genre space the title played in, but becomes more so considering that there's a significant psychological element to the proceedings - a thrust that necessarily requires a thoughtful, delicate touch, which 'Visitors' plainly lacks.

The film is still enjoyable as we see it, certainly. There are terrific ideas here, as small as a single scene or line of dialogue that could have been latched onto, and all the fundamentals are in place for a spooky good time. The trouble is that every last piece of it is presented so bluntly, curtly, and loudly that it is stripped of a substantial portion of its power: every nightmare, dream, or vision, further illustration of Georgia losing touch with reality, and otherwise incident; so much of the camerawork, cuts, and sequencing; and even too much of Radha Mitchell's acting, under these conditions. I don't wholly dislike this, but it's no more than half the picture it could have been if a more nuanced, tactful, understated approach had been taken toward every component part. As it stands any possible thrills and chills are diminished, and even basic viewer engagement. Entertainment remains, but how much?

I appreciate the production design and art direction, stunts and effects (even the digital ones, if and when used sparingly), and costume design, hair, and makeup. Franklin illustrates a keen eye at times for shot composition. Though the same isn't necessarily true of how it is employed here, I like Nerida Tyson-Chew's music in and of itself. But why is it that the detached voice of Steven Grives is the one facet of the movie to consistently demonstrate a measure of subtlety? Why is it only well within the last act that it feels like the feature at large is firing on all cylinders? Why does the ending, specifically, represent a complete tonal shift? There was potential here, and there were also too many choices made that shoved that potential into a neat, small, useless box. For everything that 'Visitors' could have been, it ends up being no more than middling, and becomes an exercise in discovering all the ways that the title could have been improved upon. Here is another instance where I'm glad for those who get more out the flick than I do, but I'm just rather disappointed. Check it out if you want, and it's surely best suggested for those who are major fans of someone involved, but there are too many better ways to spend your time to bother much with this.

This Australian horror caught me by surprise, what I mean by that is I'd never heard of it so my expectations were low and doubly the type of horror movie it is rarely manages to entertain.

It tells the story of Georgia Perry a 25yr old Australian girl intent on sailing around the world solo. It stars Radha Mitchell and Dominic Purcell and is actually really quite good.

Mitchell carries the movie well considering she makes up the bulk of the film. It is well structured, genuinely tense and though not scary it certainly makes up for it in other areas.

It looks great, the cast do a solid job and despite the ropey ending I walked away suitably impressed.

The Good:

Highly original

Well written

Great setting

The Bad:

Questionable ending

Not for everyone

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Dominic Purcell looks weird with hair

A proper horror film with the same setting could be terrifying

I just found this movie bizarre. Parts of it were spooky and I thought Radha Mitchell did a fine acting job-but the cat was by far the best actor in the movie. What was with the bilge pump? Dead Calm or The Island would be much better spooky boat movies.