At the heart of the new revenge thriller The Guest is the kinky pleasure of the moments after the pin is pulled but before the inevitable explosion. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett's previous film, 2013's You're Next, was an exceptional reinvigoration of the home-invasion horror film. With The Guest, they've stepped up their game, bringing in a great supporting cast and a pulsating electrogoth song score (you can never have too much Xymox) while keeping things focused, darkly comic and brisk.
From the moment this David character appears — played by Downton Abbey's Cousin Matthew himself, Dan Stevens — there is a question before the audience and the Peterson family onscreen: Do we accept this construction? This amiable, well-built, subtly Southern-accented fellow with the military background and the great backstory — is he too good to be true? Stevens makes him damn near impossible to resist, walking the perfect line between autocritique and gonzo immersion in his take on all that is American.
The family is particularly susceptible, grieving after the horrible loss of their soldier son. Once David arrives on their doorstep, instead of platitudes and the occasional friendly casserole, they've got a strapping man who knew their son, who respects them, who will help out around the house for whatever they need. And if some problems come up with the townfolk, why, he just might engage in a few horrifying acts of violence — just to help the Petersons get by a little easier.
An exploitation shocker with a provocative post-9/11 spin on the wages of retribution, The Guest is the contemporary equivalent of films like Teorema or Boudu Saved from Drowning/Down and Out in Beverly Hills, where an enigmatic stranger shows up, has sex with an entire family, and leaves them confused and slightly improved for it. Sadly, The Guest proves that you can't fix the American family with sex, instead aiming to do so with violence. But that really doesn't work either. There's a short-term satisfaction to violent retribution, but chickens do come home to roost.
So we know that this situation is bound to get ugly. In Wingard and Barrett's hands, it does, gloriously so. Bad gun transactions, barfights, gratuitous acts of violence against restaurants, Halloween festivals — any one of these moments would have been the highlight of the other action or horror films currently in theatres. The beauty of The Guest is it has them all in one place.
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