Review: The Guest

Director: Adam Wingard

Starring: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Brendan Meyer, Sheila Kelley

4 stars

There's nothing strikingly original about the premise for The Guest, the latest film from Adam Wingard, the director of You're Next.

Mysterious strangers have been turning up on hapless movie families’ doorsteps for years, appearing at first to be the solution to all their problems, but then rapidly proving to be anything but.

We've seen it in Pacific Heights, Brimstone & Treacle, Single White Female – the list goes on.

And now we see it in The Guest, as recently discharged United States marine David Collins (Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey fame) appears at the home of the Petersons, bearing a message of love from their recently deceased son, Caleb, killed in Afghanistan with David at his side.

While the matriarch of the family Laura (Sheila Kelley) is quick to warm to the new house guest, the other members of the family take their time to be convinced, but ultimately succumb to David’s charms. Even the suspicious 20-year-old daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) is temporarily swayed by the devilishly good-looking visitor.

The audience knows from the outset that something isn’t quite right. Unsettling camera cuts and pans hint at turbulent forces at work. David seems not to sleep, preferring to spend his hours alone staring menacingly into the distance to a soundtrack of ominous synth stabs, and the camera lingers just that bit too long on the name of the high school the youngest sibling Luke (Brendan Meyer) attends – Moriarty High – suggesting some dastardly subterfuge is at work.

It’s not too long before David’s suppressed psychopathic tendencies explode, and while his early deeds, such as confronting the bullies who are making Luke’s life a misery, may seem the stuff of overenthusiastic philanthropy, things soon escalate with predictably fatal consequences.

If it all sounds a bit derivative, that’s because it is, and that’s half of the appeal. The film knows it’s working in well-worn territory, and manages to both embrace and pastiche the fact, without sinking to the level of an air-headed horror/thriller parody.

The closing section seems to aim for a world record for knowing, self-referential winks, giving nods to Halloween, Carrie, Enter the Dragon, Leon and a hundred horror clichés in one frenetic 10-minute spell.

The film is more than the sum of its parts, though with definite areas of weakness.

The script is nothing special for the genre. It’s played with more humour, but lacks genuine psychological intrigue. The relationships between the recently bereaved family members are only covered in the briefest of fashion, while the final reveal of the truth about David’s mysterious past is forced and comes across as more corny than self-aware.

The film is elevated to a higher level by two main factors, however.

First, Wingard gets the pacing just right. A slow reveal with just enough hints of something being not quite right keeps the audience guessing, before seguing neatly into a non-stop, all-action, bloody finale.

Second, Stevens’s performance is genuinely entrancing. Charming yet threatening, he manages to consistently stay on just the right side of the pantomime-villain line, and his presence holds the audience in thrall throughout.

A third bonus, though this is entirely subjective, was an incredible soundtrack featuring the likes of Love and Rockets, The Sisters of Mercy and Front 242. But you don’t need to be a devotee of 80s gothic rock to agree that The Guest is 99 minutes well spent at the cinema this weekend.

cnewbould@thenational.ae