The Guest: David Collins (Dan Stevens), a glib soldier, turns up at the Peterson's home and ingratiates himself as a friend of their dead son. The Peterson's take in Collins as he is down on his luck; despite them being on the brink of collapse after their son's death. However not everything is as it seems, Collins starts producing wads of cash, violence seems to follow him no matter where he goes, and a spate of unusual deaths happen within the community.
The is a film from Adam Wingard where the cracks are evident through out; it's fun, it's humour is black and it has visual a style that follows in the steps of Drive, for the most part, but Wingard sacrificed cohesion to achieve this.
Let's take the shootout scene in the film as an example; beforehand Collins' background is just shoehorned in to allow for the shootout. As the action in the scene flows several cheesy moves from Collins' turns the tides for him, and while we are lead to believe that the people attacking are an elite squad, the script dumps more exposition into the scene to reveal Collins is the elite-elite. And then to allow for the entire film to come to a neat ending Collins does something that completely undermines his actions in the first half of the film, and Collins repeats this when he bumps into Mr Peterson in the scene after.
The script undermines the film time and time again in this regard too; the climactic scene at the school, the epilogue to establish a sequel, Luke Peterson's reaction to some of Collins' more violent tendencies, and creating relationships just to move the film forward, here's looking at you Kristen. Wingard also embraces cliché after cliché; Collins sinisterly stares out windows or into the mirror, the local women are loose and the youth are all drug addicts, the mother is oppressed like Marge Simpson, and the father drinks like someone out of Mad Men.
Acting is careless as well; Dan Stevens is just smug throughout, Maika Monroe will be added to pile of strong female protagonists that exclusively turn up in horror films, and the rest of the cast seemed like they had no idea what they had to do in each scene.
Nonetheless there is a b-movie/ironic charm to the film; a "so bad its good" intention to it all; my housemates and I laughed through most of it, and Wingard plays up to this tone. Hiring Lance Reddick, or as we kept on referring to him "Cedric Daniels, feels tongue in cheek, so does the continuous pastiche to 80s pop videos and the over the top violence. I would call this a social film, where the enjoyment comes from watching it with friends and laughing at some of the more irreverent scenes.
The is a film from Adam Wingard where the cracks are evident through out; it's fun, it's humour is black and it has visual a style that follows in the steps of Drive, for the most part, but Wingard sacrificed cohesion to achieve this.
Let's take the shootout scene in the film as an example; beforehand Collins' background is just shoehorned in to allow for the shootout. As the action in the scene flows several cheesy moves from Collins' turns the tides for him, and while we are lead to believe that the people attacking are an elite squad, the script dumps more exposition into the scene to reveal Collins is the elite-elite. And then to allow for the entire film to come to a neat ending Collins does something that completely undermines his actions in the first half of the film, and Collins repeats this when he bumps into Mr Peterson in the scene after.
The script undermines the film time and time again in this regard too; the climactic scene at the school, the epilogue to establish a sequel, Luke Peterson's reaction to some of Collins' more violent tendencies, and creating relationships just to move the film forward, here's looking at you Kristen. Wingard also embraces cliché after cliché; Collins sinisterly stares out windows or into the mirror, the local women are loose and the youth are all drug addicts, the mother is oppressed like Marge Simpson, and the father drinks like someone out of Mad Men.
Acting is careless as well; Dan Stevens is just smug throughout, Maika Monroe will be added to pile of strong female protagonists that exclusively turn up in horror films, and the rest of the cast seemed like they had no idea what they had to do in each scene.
Nonetheless there is a b-movie/ironic charm to the film; a "so bad its good" intention to it all; my housemates and I laughed through most of it, and Wingard plays up to this tone. Hiring Lance Reddick, or as we kept on referring to him "Cedric Daniels, feels tongue in cheek, so does the continuous pastiche to 80s pop videos and the over the top violence. I would call this a social film, where the enjoyment comes from watching it with friends and laughing at some of the more irreverent scenes.