Robert (Finn Jones) and Maia (Jessica McNamee) are happily married and are going back to her parental home. Robert searches the house and finds old portraits in the attic with a figure that looks identical to him, only called ‘The Visitor’. Robert, troubled by the portraits, embarks on a quest to find out who the figure is, despite Maia’s efforts to reassure him. People around Robert and Maia begin to be murdered, escalating Robert’s desperation to the truth and revealing family secrets along the way.
Also in the cast of The visitor are Victoria Harris, Donna Biscoe, Thomas Francis Murphy, Shanna Forrestall and more. It was written by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason and directed by Justin P. Lange.
“This movie has a really cool twist at the end,” McNamee noted, “I’m looking forward to people’s reaction to it… it’s a cinematic experience, and I think Justin did a really good job making sure that this is a really nice movie to watch.”
Collaboration between Finn Jones, Jessica McNamee and Justin P. Lange
In an earlier interview, Lange explained that much of what we see in The visitor can be attributed to the amount of collaboration that took place between him, Jones, and McNamee before and during the filming process.
“Before signing up for the movie, I sat down with Justin, and we had a chat… I didn’t want to be in a horror movie that was like any other horror movie… and I was really happy to see Justin had the same intentions. He wanted to make a film that takes the genre to the next level. The fact that it was a doppelganger film about this character who had just moved to a new world, and he doubted his reality, his sanity, by whom he gets lit, these are all really interesting elements for an actor to play. I thought it was more of a character piece than just a genre movie,” Jones said.
When we were on set, “It was kind of placing our characters in a way that it wouldn’t be predictable at the end,” explained McNamee. This certainly works on the page as well, as she noted that she also didn’t see the twist coming while reading the script. “I didn’t see it coming at all, this twist. It was really fun playing that out leading up to the twist and leaning into the idea a bit. We really wanted to set that up for the public,” McNamee said.
“We were constantly changing and changing the film on a daily basis to try to make it the best version of what it could be. Fortunately, Blumhouse and Justin gave us the creative freedom and the time and space to make this movie the way we envisioned it. The three of us, along with the producers, were constantly thinking almost every day, ‘Okay, is this the version of the movie we want to tell? Because if not, let’s change it.’ There are certain actions in the scenes that have been changed to make it feel more authentic, so that when we get that big twist at the end, it makes sense and the audience is with us,” Jones added.
Rooting the visitor in reality
The Visitor does its best to breathe new life into horror by putting a cerebral lens over the leads, yet remains grounded in reality. Especially Robert as a character, as he has moments where he questions his sanity when exposed to various forms of manipulation that allow him to resonate as a person, while also resonating Maia from a perhaps more antagonistic approach.
“What I really love about our film is that it’s really rooted in reality, even if it’s kind of a very off-the-wall concept. We’ve spent so much time grounding these characters and developing their relationship and their backstory, and really working on our chemistry and making sure we’re on the same page, and making it as real and believable as possible,” said McNamee. .
“I think we all cared about making this movie the best we could, so we were willing to go through every battle to make it what it became,” Jones said.
The visitor will be available digitally and on demand from October 7, 2022 and will be streamed on EPIX in Dec.