Grandparents are weird. They talk funny, they smell funny, they act funny. And those are your normal, run-of-the-mill grandparents!

In The Visit, Becca and Tyler (ages 15 and 13) take a train ride from Philly to rural Pennsylvania to spend a week with grandparents they’ve never met. Their single mom has been estranged from her parents for years, until they find their daughter online and ask to see the grandkids.

Why would a mother (Kathryn Hahn) allow such a thing? Well, the teens (played by Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) are bright and self-assured. And mom wants to go away on a cruise with her new guy.

The grandkids are delightfully chatty, always recording video. Many of the film’s key scenes include their “found footage.” They engage in Skype conversations with their mom while she cruises. Tyler’s white-kid raps are clever and hilarious.

The grandparents Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) seem like sweet people. They pick up the kids at the train station and bring them back to their farmhouse. Soon, weird things begin to happen. Frightening things. Funny things.

As nights and days go by, the grandparents are revealed to be a bit stranger than your grandparents or mine. The Visit establishes a solid level of creepiness. There’s a visual shout out to a horror/suspense classic. Suspense builds.

Two questions need answering: What the heck is going on? And… Is writer/director M. Night Shyamalan still capable of making an engaging movie?

Second question first. Shyamalan, who burst onto the movie scene with The Sixth Sense in 1999 and followed with Unbreakable in 2000, went into an artistic slump after 2002’s Signs. With The Visit, he shows that he maintains the ability to merge strong characters with a plot that keeps an audience engaged and wondering.

Regarding what the heck is going on… well, no spoilers here. But… A key element of a successful suspense thriller is a decent payoff to the setup. The Visit accomplishes that trick and delivers a fast-moving hour and a half of creepy fun. It’s a movie to enjoy.

Call your grandma and see if she’d like to go with you!