3 out of 5

Director: Giulio Paradisi

It’s not a mess.  I think it should be… and maybe on some wacky giallo cosmic level it wants to be, but it’s not.  And I feel like you can tell from the opening shots: while the movie has recently been toted as an oddball classic (yes, why I watched it), director Giulio and his special effects team pitch a certain look for the movie – narrow shots, framing from behind foreground objects, obvious composite shots – and stick to it, thus removing a general B-movie component of visual ineptness.  ‘Visitor’ seems to understand its budget limitations and chooses to embrace them as a way of adding to the off nature of the movie.  Off in a pleasing way, mind you, where the vibe is just strange enough to keep you involved without drawing that line where you throw your hands up in either delight or dismay at the incomprehensibility.  That opening shot is a wonderfully ominous conceptual (methinks) intro of a black cloaked man in an open, bleak landscape and empty sky which goes dark and then putrid with a neon cloud… and an approaching young girl with haunting eyes.  The cloud gives way to apocalyptic stuff, like tons smoke and ashes, and the girl gets covered in them, her eyes still somehow holding the gaze of the viewer…  It was unsettling, which is amazing.  The black cloaked man is Jerzy Colsowicz, played by John Freakin’ Huston (his real middle name), also known in the flick as the titular ‘Visitor’, and a representative of a race of bald kids.  Who are good.  Good and bald.  The young girl is Katy, played by Paige Connor, who were told carries the lineage and spirit of Sateen, a force representing the opposite of good bald kids.  We get this info in a story-telling session, which, uh, wikipedia tells me was hosted by Jesus Christ as played by Franco Nero… a detail we’ll just move past because I don’t remember it being in the film… before Jerzy busts in all holy-like and states… to Jesus… one of those great movie “It’s Time” kinda lines.  We then join up with Katy, following her about committing all sorts of evil acts while The Visitor tries to convince her to come to the light and Katy’s mum’s boyfriend, Lance Henrikson, pursues a secret agenda – as dictated to him by a secret group of powerful people – to get Katy’s mom to birth another evil baby.  World-taking-over plans are simmering.

Yes, it all reads a little kooky, but no moreso than any other sci-fi or horror flick from either end of the B-movie / classic spectrum.  And while ‘The Visitor’ never really swings one way or the other, it does enough important things right to keep you watching.  Firstly – and perhaps most importantly – Paige Connor is excellent.  She’s creepy as hell and balances childish, churlish charm with reckless evil, Paradisi adding to the effect with great lighting tricks that give her these haunting reflections upon massive irises.  There are mentions of this being an Omen rip-off (producer Ovidio G. Assonitis was apparently big on the Asylum style Blockbuster-on-the-cheap move, and Omen was a couple years prior), but beyond the tie of the kid, Visitor stands on its own with its own vibe.  And though the good vs. evil thing (and, sigh, the Jesus thing) certainly syncs with the Omen’s use of Satan, not directly tying this to a religious point of view allows the role of Katy to seem less predictable… which is more frightening.  Secondly, the acting and characters are good.  It’s an Italian/American production, so some of the dialogue comes out a little stilted, but I already mentioned two name actors and the rest of the cast – notably Joanne Nail as Katy’s mom, especially once becoming unhinged when she realizes things are getting strange – don’t disappoint, and their characters are given enough for the actors to work them into three dimensional roles.  Thirdly – the music by Franco Micalizzi employs this screeching, errant bird cry along with a lot of ambient shimmering… and then somewhat hilariously, this bombastic hero theme for The Visitor.  But it works.  It works in the same way as the special effects and the purposefully open-ended nature of the story.

It’s still viewer beware: I’m not calling this the best movie of all time; ‘The Visitor’ is an average flick.  Some moments linger, and the way some aspects are stitched together is incredibly odd.  However, it tries more than you would expect from its genre (or from reading about it, or from how it looks), and achieves a surprising amount visually.  This is exactly the kind of fringe stuff that deserves HD treatment, so it’s a good deal that it struck enough of a chord for people that Drafthouse picked it up for a 2014 Blu Ray release.