The Surprise Visit – Movie Review
86 Minutes, Not Rated
Written by Stephen Meier
Directed by Nick Lyon
Synopsis:
When a young couple makes a surprise visit to Mom, they get an even bigger surprise themselves from an old family friend who plans to steal Mom’s valuable jewelry while she is out of town. But when the “easy peasy” robbery goes wrong, resulting in the accidental death of the daughter’s husband, it forces the two young drug addicts to make a difficult decision; to abandon ship, or do the unthinkable.
“Based on a true story.”
We’ve talked about this before. How much of a film is “based on” before it become “inspired by” or even “I heard about this thing this one time?”
Regardless, the biggest selling point for The Surprise Visit is that, whether this story actually happened it not, it feels like it could have happened.
And we could guess that some version of it has, indeed, happened. At least some parts of it, at any rate.
Despite Eric Roberts getting top billing here, he’s not in the film all that much, and the film really rests on the shoulders of Rob Riordan and Jacqi Vene as Casey and Annabelle, who find themselves in over their heads.
This is all Casey’s fault, as Annabelle is truly a naive, trusting soul.
Plus: drugs make people do stupid things, as can a victim mentality.
The performances are good, although I found the accent Jaqui adopted for Annabelle to be grating to the point of wishing she would just stop talking. Part child, part ham-fisted southern, all annoying, it’s the worst part of the film.
Her behavior and physical performance is great, and the emotion she’s giving us is genuine, but that delivery…
Ugh.
Riordan embodies the drug-addled son-with-daddy-issues well enough to where, when he meets his ultimate fate, you feel no sympathy for him at all.
The ending of this one was a bit of a twist, though, I must admit.
Check it out if you’d like.
The Surprise Visit is available in theaters and On Demand.
The Surprise Visit stars Eric Roberts, Tricia Hawn, Rob Riordan, Jacqi Vene and Serah Henesey.
And please, if you like what we do, consider helping us keep on entertaining you. You can use this handy link:
Or, you could check out the merch in Our Store:
VSMP Merch Store
Not only will you be helping us out if you pick up some merch, you get cool stuff to wear around (including the coveted WTFWT? logo!).
Leave a Reply