“She thought I wanted to kill her. You can’t kill children, only the evil part.”

Justin’s rating: This one’s for the birds

Justin’s review: I may have made a mistake bouncing from Phase IV to The Visitor in quick succession, because there is only so much psychedelic ’70s scifi pretentiousness I can take before the whimpers start to drown out the sound on my screen. Make sense? This decade didn’t wanna.

Want to watch someone’s head implode from confusion? Show them — without context — the first five minutes of this movie. There’s a bunch of bizarre images followed by a wide-eyed cult leader telling a classroom of bald kids about some evil space alien “mu-tant” who fled here and was chased by good aliens who used giant birds to track them down but the bad guy turned into a giant eagle and was killed after he had tons of evil kids who still present a threat. One of these is an eight-year-old girl, news of whom freaks the cult leader out to an extreme degree.

Contrast that with “SOMEHOW PALPATINE HAS RETURNED” and you’ll see how far we’ve come with scifi movies in our culture.

So at a simplistic level, The Visitor is about two factions of aliens vying for control over a girl with psychic powers for the fate of the world. But that sentence is stripping away the sheer weirdness that saturates this entire film, including its love of Atlanta and thinly veiled biblical themes.

The girl, Katy (Paige Connor), doubles down on evil and doesn’t mind using her powers at her dad Raymond’s (Lance Henricksen) suggestions. He’s pretty wicked himself, wanting to breed her to his son so that she’ll give birth to a reincarnated alien that’s supposed to be Satan or something. Katy’s not only creepy beyond belief, but she’s got a pet falcon she likes to lob at people and a gun that she uses to shoot and paralyze her mother. You know, as human girls tend to do. Katy’s such an utter brat that you want Satan to lose so that the smirk will be wiped from her face.

To counter this rising threat, some old dude shows up in town with a squad of bald cultists. They all have boxes with them, and the soundtrack goes bananas when they appear. Listen, this was before the internet. People got excited about all sorts of doofy things. This old guy is Yahweh, the Obi Wan Kenobi of the film, and he’s got powers too? I guess? But they’re going to have to go against a shadowy cabal, who gives marching orders to Raymond to impregnate his girlfriend and get that second ESP kid.

Good luck trying to stay on top of the endless torrent of gibberish this throws at you. It ping-pongs between scenes where giant acts of nonsense happens and then the film is like, “Aren’t you impressed and terrified? Here, let me blast the soundtrack to 11 for no good reason whatsoever. How much are you quaking in your pants right now?”

There’s also a whole lot of birds in a movie. Like, so many birds you’ll be asking anyone who wanders into the room, “What’s with all the birds?” And you just know that the filmmakers are withholding explanations as to anything in this film so that they’ll look deep and mysterious. It’s art house snobbery, and I won’t truck for it.

Someone I read likened The Visitor to a soap opera, and I agree that’s a perfect comparison. It’s trying to be all melodramatic and ominous, but all of its choices end up being so over-the-top and random that there’s no way anyone could take this seriously. It’s pulpy schlock that’s incredibly full of itself and should be treated that way. Funny, perhaps, but I got a headache from overdoing the eyerolls.

Intermission!

• There’s a weather front coming into our meeting, but never mind
• Oh hello cult of bald children
• The way that space Jesus says “mu-tant”
• Ahh stop staring at the camera! Respect the fourth wall!
• Allegedly, God is finally funding this Atlanta Hawk basketball team
• Basketball isn’t better in slow motion, trust me
• EXPLODING BASKETBALL
• Katy’s got a pet hawk?
• That’s the largest Pong game I’ve ever seen
• This soundtrack is something else, man.
• Barbara smiling happily when she’s shot in the spine is a weird take
• Gymnastics vs. surgery
• That’s a really fast-moving chairlift
• Barbara isn’t upset in the least to be paralyzed
• ARTIFICIAL BIRDS? Who is this lady?
• “I don’t like you! You’re a child molester!”
• OK what are y’all doing on the roof there? I can only take so many scenes of this nonsense.
• “I’m a pretty bird.”
• Bird attack in the car! Maybe hit the brakes?
• “Bad, she’s just a little girl!” Lady, she SHOT YOU IN THE SPINE
• “Aren’t you a cripple molester?”
• $15 dollars for babysitting? OUTRAGEOUS
• “You’re selfish, mommy. I love you very much.” Nice mixed messages there, kid.
• Evil Inc. there loves its power ties
• Um, how is Barbara driving if she’s paralyzed?
• Nothing to see here, just an insanely oversized truck packed with goons wearing white gas masks
• The classy 7UP lampshade
• Now that your kid is dragging you up stairs by your feet, perhaps you can agree she’s evil?