Very disappointing...

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good concept, poorly executed.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

is was the worst film I have seen since Tree of Life. If you saw and liked The Tree of Life we have nothing in common.This filmmaker deploys state of the art technology to produce a film that might have some interest in an art gallery; but only you after you have walked your feet off and need a place to rest for 5 minutes. You could fast forward the film, see all the images and make a connection that that we have heard time and again.There is no story and no talking though I would love to have shouted out comments (preferably with expletives).The images were clear and there was music. The film can be deemed to possess artistic merit(almost anything not massed produced can be described this way) but hardly worth a dime, let alone the $16 I paid.

This is a scary movie that didn't scare me at all. It's a film about female empowerment that thinks not going crazy is some sort of gender-redeeming accomplishment. And Visitors also asks the viewer to guess whether its main character is menaced by ghosts, monsters or her own mind and then offers up a weirdly confusing cop out ending where it turns out to be all three. I suppose I can give these filmmakers credit for trying to mix personal drama, psychological suspense and supernatural horror. That's at least one more subject that most motion pictures attempt to take on. The lackluster end result, however, convinces me that writer Everett De Roche and director Richard Franklin would have been better off keeping things simple.Georgia Perry (Radha Mitchell) is a young Australian woman trying to sale around the world with just her cat for physical company. Mentally, she's bringing along the baggage of her paralyzed father (Ray Barrett), guilt-trip monster of a mother (Susannah York) and her undermining boyfriend (Domenic Purcell) who may or may not be cheating on her. When her boat becomes stuck in fog and becalmed waters in the Indian Ocean, Georgia starts seeing things and the line between reality and madness, safety and danger disappears.Visitors is like a piece of furniture you have to put together yourself. The picture on the box looks good but when you've finished assembling it, there are all these pieces left over and you've got with something that's so unsteady it will collapse at the slightest pressure. If you ask no questions and don't think at all about what you're watching, maybe you can get something out of this movie. If you pay attention to it and expect anything to make sense, you'll be sorely disappointed.The concept of blending physical isolation and emotional turmoil is a solid one, though not original, and adding an element of horror to the mix probably seemed like a good idea. But you need to take those different elements and blend them together where they don't just connect or coincide. The isolation, turmoil and horror need to reflect and reinforce each other. In this case, they're disconnected and sometimes at cross purposes. It's often unclear exactly what Georgia, or the audience, is supposed to be frightened of, which neuters every threat the story offers up. Is the danger that she will fail in her voyage, go crazy or get killed?I mean, if the challenge to Georgia is internal, if this is a story about dealing with her unresolved feelings toward her mother, how does setting the boat on fire to fight off shape-shifting sea spiders fit into that? And the threat is external, if the castigating image of her mother is a ghost or monster, why does that menace simply disappear when Georgia gives up her feelings of family guilt?Rahda Mitchell does a find job here and Visitors looks and sounds okay, though it feels a bit long. The story is just too internally weak and scattered to amount to anything. If you're looking for a film that succeeds at what this one attempted, go check out The Descent. You don't need to welcome Visitors into your life.

Visitors is a hard, hard movie to enjoy. It's so slow and leaden in it's pacing that at times I was drifting off during the film. This was about 11AM on a hot, sunny day, I might add, not midnight on a cold winter evening, so you get an idea of just how slow this movie is.Strange thing is, it's not long. At 100 minutes it's only ten minutes longer than the average straight to video, and it's only fifteen minutes longer than the superior Darkwolf that I'd quite happily watched the day before. It just drags an awful lot, enough for you to lose interest.When it's not mistaking S-L-O-O-W development for atmosphere, Visitors is good enough at action to almost make it excusable how slowly things happen. While the flashbacks are both cheap and annoying as a way to round out Radha Mitchell's boats-woman, the hauntings/aliens/whatever are actually quite creepy and effective, especially when her suicidal mother turns up and starts groaning in the night. Full marks for not splurging make-up all over the shop too. The single person boat is a creepy place, and at times the movie uses the full power of the location and the deserted sea to scare the hell out of you.Still though, I find it hard to recommend Visitors. I came out of it not only feeling like I'd just watched a 4 hour film, not a 100 minute one, but also feeling like I'd been cheated somehow, as while offering many explanations as to the hauntings (Mind games? Real ghosts? Space aliens?) Visitors doesn't pick one for definite. All that watching Radha Mitchell talk to her cat and Dominic Purcell smoulder for no obvious reason about some unexplained horrific event in the past, for nothing?. Say what you like about Shyamalan, but at least he tells you what happened, however crazy/stupid you might think it. If you don't watch a lot of these movies, your fresh perspective will probably improve matters somewhat, but I found this slow, boring and highly derivative. If you want to scare yourself silly there are much better places to do it, if you want a clever thriller there are many that are smarter.

I liked this one. It's a phantasmal little movie about a woman sailing alone around the world, becalmed in the Indian Ocean when she's only a few days' sail from the end of her trip. She starts to see all kinds of strange and troubling things on board her yacht, including the ghost of her mother, pirates that appear and disappear, and a Maori tribesman in traditional native costume. The movie offers three possible explanations for why this is happening: A) she's been alone too long and is going bazongas, B) she's really seeing ghosts, and C) the magic crabs hitching a ride on the boat's hull are creating the whole situation. I like the crab theory myself, but the movie leaves the question tantalizingly unresolved.