RON’S BEARD VS THE GUEST (2014)

When a friend of their late son comes to town, the Peterson family takes him in not knowing he’s a vaporwave-themed killing machine. Does THE GUEST live up to its awesome soundtrack? It’s Ron’s beard versus the world’s most handsome Terminator.

David is the perfect houseguest. He cooks. He cleans. He kills.

Directed by: Adam Wingard

Written by: Simon Barrett

Starring: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Leland Orser, Sheila Kelley, Brendan Meyer, and Lance Reddick

Run Time: 100 minutes

David seems like the perfect visitor when he shows up one day, unannounced, on the doorstep of the Peterson family. He claims to be a friend of their son Caleb who served with him in Afghanistan. After some initial resistance, the charm initiative starts winning hearts and minds as the Petersons start falling under David’s spell. He’s handsome. He’s charming. He’s good with both Caleb’s mother Laura (Sheila Kelley) and father Spencer (Leland Orser). He’s something along the lines of a surrogate son to Caleb’s mother Laura (Sheila Kelley) and a best friend to father Spencer (Leland Orser). To Caleb’s little brother Luke (Brendan Meyer), David is an immediate big brother figure.

Everyone buys into David except Anna (Maika Monroe), who views David with a great deal of suspicion and refuses to relent. After all, this person their brother never really talked about showed up without any identification. He matches a picture of Caleb’s unit from Afghanistan, but he’s got no driver’s license, no obvious papers, only some dog tags, a duffel bag, and a desire to help the family.

There aren’t enough good things to say about the performance of Dan Stevens as David. He’s so handsome and charming, with an easy smile and a friendly demeanor, but there’s just something a little off about him. Stevens does an excellent job of communicating the thought processes behind David’s eyes, as he has just the slightest delay as he processes a situation and his training or programming decides just how to respond. It’s in every interaction David has with the Peterson family; he’s reading them and figuring out just how to be the guy they want him to be.

Even with Anna, he’s able to overcome her suspicions eventually by being a nice guy, or at least the approximation of one. There’s a reason Maika Monroe remains an in-demand horror actress, and she’s able to balance Anna’s suspicion of David with likability. She feels rightfully put-upon, but at least a little sympathetic to her family’s needs and what role David plays for them. She’s able to have good chemistry with Stevens, and especially Brendan Meyer. The two siblings play off one another well, meaning that even when Stevens isn’t on screen, THE GUEST doesn’t drag. There’s a slowly-growing, persistent paranoia that builds from David’s first appearance, and with every reveal Anna uncovers, that mask that David wears around the family has started to slowly fall apart.

That’s the masterful thing about THE GUEST. Adam Wingard is a great editor and a very skilled director, so the craft and pacing of the thing is deliberate. The story progresses steadily, and picks up speed as it goes along. By the time blood starts being shed, things are already starting to go wrong for David. The appearance of Lance Reddick and his team of mercenaries are just the final straw, leading to an incredible, thrilling climax that takes place in a brilliantly constructed Halloween maze at the high school gym and leaves a trail of bodies scattered across the high deserts of New Mexico.

There can be an issue, in certain films, of style over substance. In the case of THE GUEST, the style is the substance. Imagine a version of THE TERMINATOR in which Kyle Reese was both the hero of the film and a T-800, or a version of COBRA in which Marion Cobretti was charming and likable. Like a lot of those great 80’s classic action movies with horror elements, THE GUEST features very similar high-quality action sequences featuring aggressively moody, vaporwave-coded visuals and a terse, synth-heavy soundtrack like a lower-budget version of Michael Mann’s COLLATERAL (or MANHUNTER with gun fights).

THE GUEST is a lean, mean throwback that makes up for its lack of budget by filling the movie with skilled character actors to allow Simon Barrett’s story to shine and spending most of the budget on ambience and a few big action sequences. Consider THE GUEST must-see viewing before Wingard and Barrett’s quasi-sequel ONSLAUGHT hits theaters this fall.

Ron Hogan is a writer, podcaster, gadabout, and raconteur from Louisville, Kentucky. You can read his written works at Den of Geek, Film Stories, and at several magazines and sites that no longer exist. You can hear his voice (and potentially see his magnificent beard) on the Film Strip Podcast. 

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