Review: The Guest
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Shot in lurid colors and drizzled with a squelchy synthesizer score, Adam Wingard's bloody thriller is so enamored of John Carpenter it might as well be passing him mash notes in social studies.
City Paper grade: B-
Shot in lurid colors and drizzled with a squelchy synthesizer score, Adam Wingard’s bloody thriller is so enamored of John Carpenter it might as well be passing him mash notes in social studies. Like his dopey siege movie You’re Next, The Guest doesn’t wear its influences on its sleeve so much as tote them around in a plastic pail, slathering every available surface with genre fetishism, and just enough self-consciousness to pass off redundancy as homage. Downtown Abbey’s Dan Stevens is plenty menacing (and equally dreamy looking) as a military veteran who inveigles himself into the home of a deceased comrade and starts kicking up dust in a small town, teaching the family’s weak little brother to kick ass and drawing lustful glances from passing girls. But Wingard lacks the wit to invert the sexist stereotypes he draws upon, and final girl Maika Monroe isn’t given a character so much as a grab-bag of half-sharp lines and reaction shots. It’s like eating in a favorite restaurant after the kitchen staff has changed: Everything looks right, but the taste is off, and no matter how much you eat, it never satisfies.
