Review: ‘The Guest’

“The Guest” takes a lot of elements of my favorite movies and some of my favorite genre elements and cliches and tropes and puts it all together in a slick, sexy, cool package, so I guess this is a bit of a disclaimer up top just to say that this movie kind of hits me in my cinematic sweet spot. Basically if I was making a movie like this, I would make it in the same style, if not go even harder with it, and I loved just about every choice made in every aspect of this low budget yet totally off the wall flick.

First off, the trailer for this movie is crap, and thank the movie heavens that I didn’t see the trailer or see out to watch it before I saw this movie. I advise you to do the same and try to avoid it. Now of course I DID put it at the end of this review, cause SOME of you will still want to see the trailer first, but trust me on this one, just see the movie. As for my review here, I am going to give out as few plot deets as possible while still trying to explain why I enjoyed this movie so much.

So “The Guest” starts with some random dude named David (Dan Stevens) showing up at a lady’s house and claiming to be a friend of their deceased son, a fellow soldier who was there with her son when he died. She invites him in, he explains that he promised he take care of this family in their son’s absence, and before long he is staying with them for a few days. And when he quickly finds out the different problems all the family members are going through, he finds ways to try to help them all out with their problems. Meanwhile, their oldest daughter definitely has a thing for David, but she’s trying to fight those urges a bit. And we know it is likely a good thing she fighting these urges because the movie lets us know pretty early on that David is going to be up to no good in some form or fashion. We often get shots of David looking very intense, as the camera pushes in slowly and the music ramps up and drones a bit and gets louder, really driving home the fact that no one really knows this dude and that he could really be up to anything at that point.

Here is some movie nerd shorthand for the geeks out there:

Drive + Hesher x John Carpenter = The Guest

This guys is an obvious loner, he is very polite and helpful but definitely has some deep seeded issues that appear ready to explode right on the surface, and yet he’s also friendly and genuinely seems to want to help people whenever he can. He just has a particular way of helping that might leave a little to be desired.

And halfway through this movie let’s just say that movie takes a little shift and opens up into something else totally different and unexpected and “The Guest” really starts getting bonkers. That’s really enough information for you, just rest assured that this goes to a few unexpected places, and it all definitely feels like an inspired movie, like everyone behind had a vision for what they wanted to make and really did a good job in trying to make that happen.

So when the shift comes it arrives as a bit of a “what the fuck” moment as the scope of the movie suddenly widens, but the tone and mood of the whole thing doesn’t change or suffer. Actually they double down and hit the style even harder, which involves lot of heavy color saturation, and scenes set to awesome sounding electronic music, bounding back and forth between the uber cool “Drive” score and the synth-heavy throwback to the 80’s kind of music that helped make John Carpenter movies so memorable.

“The Guest” is a great example of a filmmaker taking his or her favorites movies and influences and putting them all together into something that has the look and feel of some older, classic films but also feels modern and fun and new at the same time. As the story unfolds and we learn more about David and we see how his presence affects the family as well as the rest of this small town community, the tension increases and the stakes are raised and it all builds to a crazy, tense, stylish final scene and ending that is pretty memorable. This movie is pretty great, people, so just see it the first chance you get, okay? Trust.