'The Guest' (15)

***

When a man arrives at their front door, claiming to be a close friend of their recently dead son, the Peterson family welcome him into their home, and their lives. David is charming, quick to help and ever respectful, but after the town is hit with a spate of deaths, Anna Peterson begins to doubt the credibility of David’s story.

We all know the story: a new person arrives in town appearing to be one thing, and actually turns out to be something quite different, so in terms of originality, The Guest is somewhat lacking. Want of narrative ambition, however, does not make this a dull and uninteresting film – it is fun, somewhat creepy, and has the second most ludicrous final act so far this year, second only to Luc Besson’s Lucy. Dan Stevens (yes, Matthew from Downton Abbey) is David, a soldier with Special Ops training, who the audience immediately distrust, but who the Peterson family take an almost instant liking to… all except Anna (Maika Monroe) who finds him as peculiar as we viewers. Stevens is obviously having a great time in the role, wooing everyone he comes across with his scintillating smile and bright blue eyes, and his accent isn’t half bad either. The relationship he forms with Luke (Brendan Meyer), the bullied and misunderstood youngest son, contain some of the highlights of the film, including an excellent face-off with the school’s headmaster.

There are no hidden depths to be discovered here – it is entirely surface. The juxtaposition between the slow-burning thriller feel of the beginning and the all-out, guns blazing, slasher-style conclusion was, for me, too great. The first half of the film is quite creepy, with David walking around the house, his face contorted into a charming Ken-doll smile. There are a lot of hints towards him being something more than just human (not needing much sleep, drinking a red beverage, lightning fast reactions – c’mon! The clues are all there!), and I was disappointed with the actual reason for his strangeness. The end, however, abandons all subtly with a loud and extended shoot-out, followed by a chase around a darkened barn decked out for the high school’s Halloween dance. There is even a chase through a Halloween maze and a sequence in a room furnished with lots of mirrors! I think the end was knowingly outrageous, but I was let down by how different it was to the beginning – there was such a build up to finding out who David was that to finish the film off with such cheesy horror movie style clichés seemed a bit of a waste. Was it meant to be funny? The scene in which David shoots a waitress and then blows up a café made me feel more uncomfortable than amused. It was all very strange!

So, not without merit but slightly disappointing in that the filmmakers seem to lack the strength to their convictions to make this into a really creepy, horror/thriller-style B-Movie. Dan Stevens is perfectly fine as David, and this role will surely help him break out into Hollywood – I suspect we may even be looking at the next James Bond here!