The Guest was produced by Snoot Entertainment and has been picked up for US theatrical distribution by Picturehouse.
My sense of anticipation for The Guest was at fever pitch by the time I sat down to see it at South By Southwest. I had missed some of the earlier screenings already, which was stressing me out. And I ended up seeing it right before I saw The Raid 2, making this night a double feature of my two most anticipated movies of the whole festival. I had never seen a trailer for The Guest (to the best of my knowledge there isn’t one), and I had been told that the less I knew about the film, the better. What I did know was that it had a gloriously 1980s synth score, was written by Simon Barrett, and was directed by Adam Wingard. This team, who, along with producer Keith Calder, brought us You’re Next, scored such a knockout hit with that film that I was going to be frothing at the mouth in anticipation for whatever their next collaboration was going to be.
And it is with that elaborate set up in mind that I tell you I was not at all disappointed in The Guest. I don’t want to contribute to some kind of overhype machine-think mentality, so I’ll lay out some of the issues that the film does have. But those issues didn’t really impact my overall enjoyment much at all. Yet I definitely agree that they less you know about The Guest, the more opportunity you will have to be mind-blown by it.
The titular guest David (Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey fame) is a marvelous character played to perfection by Stevens in a truly entrancing, star-making performance. When David shows up on the Peterson family’s doorstep, claiming to have been with the Peterson’s oldest son when he died on the front lines in Afghanistan, he immediately ingratiates himself into the family. First Mrs. Peterson (Sheila Kelley) is bewitched by his “ma’ams” and his sincerity. Then youngest son Luke (Brendan Meyer) watches in rapt satisfaction as David swoops in and begins helping him with his bullying problem in… dramatic fashion. Soon enough Mr. Peterson (Leland Orser) is chugging back beers with David and asking him to stay with them a little longer. Only the beautiful, college-aged daughter Anna (Maika Munroe) seems wary, or at least disinterested, in David. Mind you, I mentioned that I don’t want to spoil much, and I have made it clear here that David isn’t exactly what he seems. But that is as far as I’ll go. Who David is, what he is up to, and how it will all play out is a twisty little game that you’ll have a great time unraveling as Barrett’s screenplay lays out crumbs for you to follow.
If you think you know what is going to happen, you are probably wrong in that same glorious way that you thought you knew what was going to happen in Cabin In The Woods and couldn’t have been farther off base. Though much of the first act is set up involving all the various people that David will bewitch with his charms, this also succeeds as a seduction of the audience. As confidently straight as I am, I couldn’t help but feel my pulse quicken a little as David charmed me right along with the Peterson family. He seems to have it all together. Great manners, good looks, and some incredibly surprising talents. And the doling out of information about who David is and what he is up to is all part of the fun here in Wingard’s cross between Stoker (which itself was an update of Hitchcock’s Shadow Of A Doubt) and dashes of 1980s action cinema. Who is David? Why does the music seem to be so ominous? Where are we going to end up by the end of this ride? I found myself running through all of these questions in my head even as I laughed and cheered at each new revelation of David’s plan and all the genuinely badass moments of action that followed.
The thrills of The Guest are scattered throughout its runtime, and, gloriously, they hold up after the movie ends. It all comes together exactly as it needs to and makes sense in a way that many twisting thrillers don’t. And all that act one set up I mentioned? It also serves to anchor the characters and give them a dimensionality that is sorely lacking in many twist-heavy thrillers that wish they even approached the good times that The Guest offers. I had a blast with the Anna character and Maika Munroe holds her own against the powerhouse performance Stevens is turning in. And some great character actors like Leland Orser as Mr. Peterson and Lance Reddick (The Wire) as… well… you’ll see. Overall I think the cast does a lot of the heavy lifting to sell what Wingard and team are offering.
So yes, The Guest is a bit of an action-mystery, with a heavily 1980s influence, despite being set in a modern America that somehow still creates mix CDs. If one needed to split hairs, then I could see the saturation of 1980s vibe running throughout feeling forced to some viewers. Even I had a little trouble with the clearly art-department-designed sequence involving a Halloween-decorated school dance complete with smoke and mirrors. While that might have felt a little much, you can’t fault a film for having a simply wonderful and propulsive score (which is apparently a combination of original tracks and selections directly from the ‘80s), a clearly distinguished style, and all wrapped together in a fun package that’ll please crowds the world over when it hits theaters in 2014.
Don’t read much else about The Guest. If you think you are interested based on what I’ve already mentioned here, or simply based on your appreciation of the creators’ earlier works, just file this away in your mind as a “must see” when it gets its wide release and enjoy the ride.
And I’m Out.