David's strangeness is apparent from the get-go, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.
The second half of the film careens headlong into glorious paranoia and conspiracy-theory, reminiscent of 1970s political thrillers, involving gleaming board-rooms populated by stone-faced military brass, top-secret briefcases, and world-class weaponry that even the military wouldn't admit to developing. The mood is both legitimately terrifying and hilarious. There's even a great scene in a Hall-of-Mirrors Haunted House maze, echoing with disorienting demonic laughter. Even in quiet safe moments sitting around the kitchen table, sharing tender memories, the characters are leered at on all sides by jack-o-lanterns and black cats and horrified ghosts. The film takes place in the weeks leading up to Halloween, and therefore the screen is filled with Halloween decorations crowding in on every single scene from the walls, the ceilings, the counter-tops. Thomas Hammock's production design adds to the camp flavor of "The Guest", sometimes tipping over into blatant parody. The music (by Steve Moore) suddenly blasts throughout, with moments of pulsing techno unease, as Anna, crouched in her bedroom decorated with Goth-Girl skull-and-crossbones, desperately tries to figure out more about the hot interloper, now sleeping in the room next door. But "The Guest" takes its time revealing what is really going on, and has a lot of fun in that slow reveal process.ĭirector Wingard and his regular screenwriter collaborator Simon Barrett are interested in genre mash-ups and the dramatic possibilities of comedy-horror, as evidenced by their previous full-length feature " You're Next." "The Guest" goes even further in that direction.
The audience can sense immediately that David is not the lost lamb he pretends to be the opening sequence alone has already clued us in. He becomes a protector to young Luke against the bullies at the boy's school, and Anna, fighting with her own suspicions about this new "guest," can't help but take notice of the guy's blazing baby-blues and phenomenal body, glimpsed wrapped in a towel in the hallway after his shower. It is the least he can do for his dead friend. On the surface, David presents himself as an old-fashioned guy, with good manners, eager to make himself useful to the grieving family. He is intense, but submissive, speaking quietly to each family member, providing them with positive memories of their fallen son, and within 24 hours he has been invited to move into the dead son's old room. The Petersons, still reeling from grief, let the stranger in. David announces himself at the door, quietly and politely, with his gentle Kentucky accent, as a friend of their eldest son who had been killed in combat.
David ("Downton Abbey"'s Dan Stevens) shows up unexpectedly on the doorstep of the Peterson family, made up of parents ( Sheila Kelley and Leland Orser), a teenage daughter named Anna ( Maika Monroe in a fantastic performance) and grade-school-age son Luke ( Brendan Meyer).
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