The Surprise Visit is a movie filled with exceptionally great direction. Where it comes up short, however, is the story itself. The setup and the execution is a formula we’ve seen many times before. Two extremely desperate people resorting to very desperate measures to help elevate them above their stations in life.

Casey (Rob Riordan) and Annabelle (Jacqi Vene) just found that they will be having their first baby. Unfortunately, they are both hopeless drug addicts living in a trailer underneath a bridge. Casey quickly resolves that they are both going to give up drugs, turn their lives around, and get on the straight and narrow for their unborn child. Casey turns to his father Hugh (Eric Roberts) to help him with money and a job.

Hugh is a long-time handyman for a very wealthy woman, and Casey believes by appealing to Hugh’s sense of family and his new grandchild, he’ll be able to get a job. Hugh has been burned one too many times by Casey and rebukes him. Angry, Casey decides that a better route is to rob Hugh’s employer when she goes out of town. This would work, except the rich woman’s daughter and her husband come to visit as a surprise. This leads to a sometimes tense, sometimes predictable home invasion thriller as Casey and Annabelle try to get out with what they came for. 

As Casey makes decisions that push himself and Annabelle further past the point of no return, bodies start piling up and a cat and mouse game ensues. Director Nick Lyon does an excellent job of keeping this cat and mouse game visually clear and at moments, tense. But these clear and concise moments are very much predictable. Lyon is also able to amp up the tension in a lot of these scenes very well, despite the cliched nature of the overall narrative. 

Despite the predictability of The Surprise Visit, there are a few performances that make the experience worthwhile. Jacqui Vene, as Annabelle, brings a sweet and naive presence to a very chaotic situation. Annabelle is a character we immediately latch on to and emphasize with, as she does everything she can to stop the situation from descending into the violence and loss it eventually does. Eric Roberts brings a world-weariness to Hugh. He is a man who has led a long and difficult life, filled with his own demons and loss. Roberts, always a welcome veteran presence in movies, is solid in the few scenes that he is given in the movie. 

From the opening frames, audiences will probably have a pretty solid idea where the narrative is going to go. That shouldn’t ignore the fact that Nick Lyon does an excellent job of constructing excellent scenes and creating tension that keeps you on the edge of your seat. This, coupled with some good performances, helps elevate The Surprise Visit just above total cliche. 

5 Out of 10