A realistic Straw Dogs meets Casualties of War. The Visitors is not like most of Elia Kazan’s work except maybe a more brutal, stark and less stylized A Streetcar Named Desire. Though it is an amazing movie, The Visitors is not an enjoyable one to view and is quite disturbing on many levels. It poses questions about the repetitive nature of brutality, the need to recreate the same cycle though it is not beneficial for anyone, the dynamics of male bonding/exile, failure of rewarding or reinforcing what the “right thing” is and the definition of appropriate “male” behavior. I hated Straw Dogs, but I preferred this movie because if you watch it closely, it is mostly told with the woman as the main character with little to no ambiguity as to her position in the situation even when you’re thinking, “What the hell are you doing?” There is definitely a dynamic throughout the movie of male characters, even the “good” ones, only seeing her not as a person, but as someone who meets their needs, almost physically sucking the life out of her. The final question in the movie just highlights the ridiculousness of it even if there were no visitors. Warning: explicit animal brutality.”