Adam Wingard, director of last year’s absolutely terrific
slasher You’re Next, returns to the
screen with The Guest. A family is
grieving when mysterious David (Dan Stevens) appears on their doorstep claiming
to be a friend of their son who died fighting in the Middle East. Sporting
charisma, impeccable manners and an unquenchable desire to help the small
family, David appears from the outset to be a miraculous Samaritan, but as
questions about his past are raised, things begin to take a darker turn.
The key to enjoying The
Guest – and indeed You’re Next – is
understanding the dark and ridiculous sense of humour with which it handles
itself, and boy does it return with a bite in the final act. The script is
sharp and funny, and any film which can make an audience of horror-phobic
students burst out laughing as someone is brutally murdered has to be doing
something right. Deny it as they might, I’m willing to bet that 100% of the
audience I saw the film with laughed like hyenas consistently throughout the
bloodshed.
Dan Stevens is absolutely brilliant in the central role, and
despite the charisma and the charm exhibited at first, you know from the start
that something very wrong is going on beneath the surface and it’s the tension
and excitement of waiting for things to go wrong that makes his performance so
enjoyable. Leland Orser as the alcoholic father with the dead-end job is one of
the funniest things in the film, Maika Monroe and Brendan Meyer as the brother
and sister duo put in fine performances, and in fact the majority of the
supporting cast bounce off Stevens incredibly well.
The movie is shot in a gorgeously stylish manner, the
palette seeping with neon glows and pitch black shadows working in fantastic
tandem. Visually, this prevents the film from looking too much like a thriller
that takes itself too seriously, enhancing the comedic tone despite the
suspenseful set-pieces that pop up every now and then. A massively enjoyable
synth-heavy score does nothing to lessen the 1980’s B-movie sensibility but
that is exactly what Wingard is aiming for, down to the font used for the
opening titles which brings to mind titles like The Hitcher and The Evil Dead.
Though deliberately slow and some might argue self-indulgent
towards the beginning, the story holds out on the twists and turns for the
final twenty minutes, with an ending that works incredibly well: Wingard has
the audience exactly where he wants them and knows exactly how to play them, the
divided audience reaction of outraged ‘No way!’ on the one side and hysterical
laughter on the other proving that to a tee. Upon leaving the screening, it was
really refreshing to hear so much animated discussion, to see so many
gobsmacked faces which made me feel completely justified in my enjoyment of the
film.
The Guest is a
shed-load of fun; a stripped-down, smart, punchy psychological thriller that
wears it’s ridiculously stylish B-movie colours proudly. There’ll be a part of
you that feels immensely guilty for laughing with it, but that’s why it works
so well. I cannot remember emerging from the cinema with such a large yet
slightly ashamed grin on my face for quite some time and unless something truly
startling emerges between now and December, I’d feel quite comfortable calling
it my film of the year.
5 stars
