The Visitor is one of the latest disappointments to surface in horror entertainment. Produced by the prolific Blumhouse Television label, this piece of slow-burn dreck offers mystery with very little payoff, much less an interesting story. London resident Robert (Finn Jones) and his American wife Maia (Jessica McNamee) return to her childhood estate after the death of her father. Situated in small town America, her family is the big fish in the little pond. So it is all the more bizarre when Robert discovers a portrait in the family home that looks a lot like himself labeled as “The Visitor”. Justin P. Lange dutifully directs from a script by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason, delivering a painfully mundane and incoherent thriller that rolls credits without having explained its existence. In short, this was not good.

Being a stranger in a strange place with the strangers around you being oddly intimate is, admittedly, a disturbing idea. The American townsfolk marvel at Robert, doe-eyed and beaming with ear-to-ear smiles but why? This is unsettling but will the film deliver? Robert is told that there is another painting in his likeness at an antique shop run by Margaret (Donna Biscoe). He goes for a cordial visit and Margaret tells him to get back to London as fast as his legs can carry him.

So we have a mystery here. Robert, a foreigner, is recognized in a random, rural town and depicted in various oil paintings scattered about. He is hiding an addiction to anxiety meds, and overtly struggling with a dependency on alcohol. We are given every reason to believe that Robert is an unreliable narrator, yet none of these narratives bubble to the surface as a north star. Boyes and Mason’s script is heavy on atmosphere and build-up but light on reveal. The result is an atmospheric, yet frustratingly opaque journey through gothic Americana.

Performance-wise, the standouts are Thomas Francis Murphy as Maxwell and Donna Biscoe as Margaret Delacroix. The two actors seem to actually believe the dire situation they both face as supporting characters and we end up squinting our eyes and buying into the mystery because of them.

The Visitor is a good-looking film with little else to show for it. The mystery is baffling. The performances were so-so. The reveal was just an unveiling of a further mystery. and we are given no real climax. I get what the filmmakers might have been going for but after stretching 89 minutes you would hope for more than “To Be Continued…”

5 Out Of 10