Now Available - The Visitor

[Pak-Man]

https://www.rifftrax.com/the-visitor

Fried chicken is delicious. So is butterscotch pudding. Ditto a tall, frosty IPA. A dozen freshly shucked oysters, yes please. Veal picatta? Mmmmm! Now, put all them all in a blender and hit puree. That’s the equivalent of The Visitor. Here’s a straw!

The Visitor’s got ambitious cinematography, big name actors, and a score that makes The Goblin sound like they barfed on their Casio. But when you add them all together, the result is a baffling mess, as incoherent as it is unintentionally funny.

When a young girl begins to manifest her latent psychic abilities, viewers will undoubtedly be reminded of dozens of movies with similar plots. But The Visitor introduces a twist that RiffTrax fans will never see coming: poorly rendered killer birds attacking! Why it’s all John Huston can do to not fall asleep in terror mid-scene.
Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, several bald children, a basketball team who can only score by dunking, an evil cabal of satanist businessmen, and the most unfortunate movie mom since Bambi for The Visitor!

Written by:
Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason

Contributing writers:
Jason Miller and Zachary Shatzer

[dbsommer]

Is this the first 'art house' type film the guys have done? I mean I've had more coherent acid trips than this one.

[PontifexPrimus]

Is it just me, or is the audio mixing in this one quite different from the usual quality?

The guys all sound like they are 2 inches away from their mics, breathing and pops are very audible, and the individual riffs cut in and out abruptly. Normally the riff track sounds like it is one continuous commentary, in this one it is all small bits and pieces.

[MrTorso]

It's not you.  The riffs are way loud.

[F-Zero]

Is it just me, or is the audio mixing in this one quite different from the usual quality?

The guys all sound like they are 2 inches away from their mics, breathing and pops are very audible, and the individual riffs cut in and out abruptly. Normally the riff track sounds like it is one continuous commentary, in this one it is all small bits and pieces.

Ya.  Same for me.  I hated it.  Unlistenable.  Please DON'T go in this direction rifftrax. 

[CJones]

Is it just me, or is the audio mixing in this one quite different from the usual quality?

The guys all sound like they are 2 inches away from their mics, breathing and pops are very audible, and the individual riffs cut in and out abruptly. Normally the riff track sounds like it is one continuous commentary, in this one it is all small bits and pieces.

Damn, you weren't kidding  The recording, mixing and sound editing in this is terrible.

[eegah]

Is it just me, or is the audio mixing in this one quite different from the usual quality?

The guys all sound like they are 2 inches away from their mics, breathing and pops are very audible, and the individual riffs cut in and out abruptly. Normally the riff track sounds like it is one continuous commentary, in this one it is all small bits and pieces.

Damn, you weren't kidding  The recording, mixing and sound editing in this is terrible.

Yeah, it's weird. The main problem is the loud riff volume. The rest I can live with.

[John Bradley]

Agreed on the RT volume being a bit high compared to the film audio.

And as usual, would have like to have seen less of the movie cut, ideally none at all. Was 108 minutes, cut down to 85, which presumably didn't help the film's sense-making any. Not necessarily fair to mock a film for being nonsensical after you cut 1/5th of its running time. For all I know the original was a paragon of tight, logical visual storytelling... though I wouldn't exactly bet on it.

That said, loved it!

While I had no idea what the hell was going on for most of it, I was enjoying every minute for the "what inexplicable 'thing' are they going to show us next" aspect. And I greatly enjoyed the excellent cinematography; many beautiful shots, and always something interesting to look at, even if you're not sure why you're looking at it. A pleasant change of pace from films like "The Power" or "Yesterday's Target" where the DP seemed to have worked exclusively in dark grainy ugliness.

Give me more well-shot gibberish! (See also, "The Million Eyes of Sumuru" and "Girl from Rio".)

[wihogfan]

Overly loud riffing resulted in my raising and lowering the volume a lot for the first 10 minutes trying to hit a sweet spot. Because I couldn't hear over half the film dialog, I downloaded subtitles that of course didn't sync properly due to so much of the movie being cut. Enjoyed it enough due to the riffing and trying awfully hard to figure out just WTF was happening and why, but seems like an uncut movie coupled with a better audio mix would have made it a lot better. Really wish Rifftrax would release MP3s of any VOD movies that they cut so we could sync the riffs to the uncut versions ourselves.

[dbsommer]

Agreed on the RT volume being a bit high compared to the film audio.

And as usual, would have like to have seen less of the movie cut, ideally none at all. Was 108 minutes, cut down to 85, which presumably didn't help the film's sense-making any. Not necessarily fair to mock a film for being nonsensical after you cut 1/5th of its running time. For all I know the original was a paragon of tight, logical visual storytelling... though I wouldn't exactly bet on it.

No, it was not. Not a tiny bit. You can watch it uncut on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKT2-m2Vb8w

Nothing cut would have made a bit more sense. There was none to begin with. I can't say for certain the movie wouldn't have worn out its welcome if they had to come up with nearly two hours of this mess. Unriffed it was painful to make it through. Same way I didn't want to see more of Spiker since it ended just before I would have started losing it. Hell, how many more 'WTF' scenes could they do before even that started to wear down the soul. Now there are some, like Kill and Kill Again and from what I heard Mind Ripper where they cut too much and made the final product not good. Some movies, like Inception could easily be riffed for the 2 hours they did it, and the movie was enjoyable since it was a heist film with a good cast. But I think they were exceptionally merciful in ending the Visitor about there.

Someone else in the comments section of the page, the discus part, sounds like they know what happened to the sound quality in techincal detail. I couldn't follow it since I know nothing about sound and recording.

 A pleasant change of pace from films like "The Power" or "Yesterday's Target" where the DP seemed to have worked exclusively in dark grainy ugliness.

But... but... what about... the Daaaaark? How could that gem of a film worked in the liiiiight? 

[CJones]

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/vhe3vSe-mmw" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/vhe3vSe-mmw</a>

[MrTorso]

Heads up. Just got word from Torgospizza that the mix was redone and the new files are available to download!

[CJones]

I just watched this movie uncut. It's actually a pretty decent movie, and it's not hard to follow. t's only hard to follow in the riffed version because they talk over a lot if the exposition. can find the movie on Youtube.

Stuff that was cut: The basketball game was WAY longer. There's a sequence where the mother is having spine surgery, inter-cut with Katie doing gymnastics. The ice skating part is longer, there's more with the detective & the gun.   

[wihogfan]

I just watched this movie uncut. It's actually a pretty decent movie, and it's not hard to follow. t's only hard to follow in the riffed version because they talk over a lot if the exposition. can find the movie on Youtube.

Stuff that was cut: The basketball game was WAY longer. There's a sequence where the mother is having spine surgery, inter-cut with Katie doing gymnastics. The ice skating part is longer, there's more with the detective & the gun.   

So sounds like nothing too important was cut, but subtitles wpuld have helped make the plot make more sense...
Subtitles I couldn't get to work because the movie was cut. Catch 22.

[Conor]

Just wanted to confirm that we saw the comments about the mix, and a new mix has been uploaded, so if you download again or stream, it should be in line with what you're used to hearing!