The Visitors (1988)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Fresh and Exciting

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Even though I'm a massive horror fan, I've never been particularly fond of the haunted house sub-genre. With a few wonderful exceptions, most recent entries in the field are dull knock-offs of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, a film which was bad to begin with. Still, I've seen very few Swedish horror flicks and THE VISITORS seems to be well-regarded by the few who've seen it, so I figured I'd give it a shot. My feelings are mixed.Plot-wise, it's what you'd expect. A family moves into a new house in the middle of the countryside. There's a lot of marital drama and the father figure (played rather well by Kjell Bergqvist) is slipping into alcoholism while losing his grasp on job security. When weird happenings start occurring in the house, the father brings in a psychic specialist and it all goes south from there.What struck me as odd about THE VISITORS is how mild a case of haunting the family experiences. One room in the house rejects wallpaper and the cellar door keeps opening, but that's about it! It really seems like a livable case of possession to me! This makes for a slow start to a film, one only kept moving by entertaining, surprisingly solid performances by the main and supporting cast.Unfortunately, there's not too many scares to be had. There's a couple solid suspense sequences and moments of shock, but the film mostly floats along towards its conclusion, which ups the ante a little too much far too quickly. The ending feels rushed and doesn't hit with any real impact. Factor in TV-film-level direction and a horridly cheesy music score, and THE VISITORS really falls a bit flat. It's not the worst I've seen in the genre by a long shot, but it didn't make me believe there's a lost canon of wonderful '80s horror flicks from Sweden floating around, waiting to be found.

This is a straight forward, pretty simple ghost movie. It has some real creepy, pretty scary scenes, and the haunty-stuff that happens to the family is cool, and well done. Pacing is good. The movie is more on the quiet side, but doesn't really get boring. Now, it is Swedish, and it is from 88, so some of the dialogue and acting is a little bit strange. But not in a way that makes it a drag to watch, though. The first part of the movie is a little stronger than the second. And the best scary parts are in the beginning, rather than the end.I find it very interesting that this is Swedish, a ghost horror movie, and made in 1988! If I were Swedish I would be proud of that!Come on Norway, ghost horror movie please! Make me proud.

I am really pleasantly surprised! This Swedish movie is really simple and plain haunted house story with focus on few characters and their experience with horror. The best thing is simplicity and minimalism - everything happens in and outside house without any explanation why scary events happens which is great and original approach that simply put viewer in the same line with characters on screen. Also, actions of characters tend to be realistic as it possible - with all bad, stupid and good moves without silly heroic and/or cold approach to mysterious events in the house. Very different from other haunted house movies. Also, lack of gore and usage of light, shadows and sound instead over the top FX to produce horrific atmosphere is fantastic approach and works amazing! Even awfully bad English dubbing in the version I watched, occasionally lame acting and silly ending can't reduce real creepiness of scary scenes.Very different view of pretty exploited theme with situations and actions that are the closest to reality if this would happen to some real family in the real world.Highly recommended!

I remember watching this movie once back in 1992, back then I thought it was amazing (somehow), upon seeing it again I realize that it has a bunch of elements that really stand out, and is worthy of attention. Don't take me wrong, I'm pretty cynic when it comes to Swedish movies, the only one I've ever liked so far is "Mannen Pa Taket" and "Noll Tolerans", however this has nothing to do with any action paced scenarios, but more the realism in it, unlike the ungraspable Hollywood-movies. It all starts out with a series of events in the families new house in a town outskirt, where everything for a start seems to be quite alright (with a couple of flaws of course), then for some reason they start to notice that something is happening to the house, the tapestries start to fall off in one of the rooms, in another nothing 'feels' right, and then it all gets creepier and creepier. I can't say that this movie is very particular in comparison to the great, I just think that this is a missed out movie, may it not be the Swedish quintessence, but a good portion of essence (at least).