Surprisingly, liked this movie a lot! It starts as a typical movie of such a genre but then turns into something else completely, which makes it pretty unusual and fun to watch.
And what's also cool that main character is kinda bad but still kinda good and you understand why.
Good job!
"Never let anyone pick on you. Otherwise, you'll carry it with you the rest of your life."
This movie rocks. I don't know how I had never heard anything about it or seen it before, but Dan Stevens plays a good psycho! There are moments I can't help but root for him.
Caked in 80s action and horror homages, The Guest is a gripping, minimalistic thriller that is infectiously compelling, even if it is a little too camp in the back-half for my liking. A ton of fun and very enjoyable, I'd forgotten what a knack Adam Wingard had for these lo-fi suspense flicks.
The movie started out interestingly, but at the end it slipped. I do not recommend it for viewing! You will waste your time. A movie for one time.
oh brother this movie stinks
Love this movie, Anna should not make that call
seeing the average - good reviews, makes me ask myself: I'm I crazy? this is hilariously horrible.
By the end I honestly was laughing by how bad it was! :joy:
The plot develops nicely, you even cheer for the antagonist, until the agent from "Fringe" shows up and the plot makes no sense.
An homage to many different ‘80s movies and directors, which seems like a fun idea in concept, but the end results are poorly written and executed. So much of this is filled with movie logic, clichés, very obvious set-ups, contrivances and conveniences at just about every turn. It’s really just dumb schlock that takes itself way too seriously for its own good (except for one scene with the school principal, where they actually do hit the right tone). Even the acting is pretty mediocre for the most part, and the lack of subtlety in Dan Stevens’ performance made the big plot twist very predictable. It would be so much better if his performance had the same kind of ambiguity as Kelvin Harrison Jr. in the movie Luce. The directing is nothing special for the most part and the action scenes aren’t all that impressive either. The only thing I’m going to remember from this is the soundtrack, which is excellent.
3.5/10
"No, I'm going to kill you."
I remember watching this film years ago before I started logging what I watch: and I remember liking it. I'm pretty sure I liked it a lot. More than I did/do now. But don't get it mistaken. Despite having liked it more in the past, I didn't hate this film watching it now. It's sufficient for entertainment.
Story-wise, there was hardly anything there. It was pretty basic stuff. And I feel like it, also, ended up biting off more than it could chew. I think unraveling the mystery was the wrong move. Even more so, since that aspect felt unnecessary in the end. Lance Reddick's character was pointless, and he shouldn't have been in the film. It was almost contrived. There had to be conflict, so there you go.
Don't get me wrong. I thought the details of the exposition regarding David Collins were intriguing. I liked that, and I think its part in the film was good. It added a lot. But it should've been revealed differently, in a way where the second half of the film remained like the first half, with that intriguing exposition still there. Sure, just like what we got, it would've been unnecessary in the end, but I feel like, that way, it would've been a positive thing. It would've added more to the intrigue without there needing to be a pay-off, an underwhelming one, at that. Just something there. No imminent baggage from the past coming into the picture.
Acting-wise, Dan Stevens was by far the highlight. His performance was captivating, charismatic, polite: and then borderline creepy, eerie, and unhinged. I bet this role played a huge part in him getting cast as David Haller/Legion in FX's Legion. I know next to nothing about that character, except all of the personalities: reason enough for my assumption.
The rest of the cast was alright, I suppose. The acting by Sheila Kelley and Brendan Meyer was probably the weakest. And while I wasn't quite "vibing" with Maika Monroe's character, her acting was still pretty decent. Besides Dan Stevens, Leland Orser's performance was probably the best.
As far as the soundtrack is concerned, I'm not sure how to feel about it. I've seen that some people thought it was fantastic and one of the film's highlights, but I don't know. Most of it sounded too loud. And the soundtrack itself didn't stand out to me.
But the one specific thing I remembered from watching this film in the past was the song that started playing near the end when David got tricked: Anthonio (Berlin Breakdown Version) by Annie. That was a bop back then and was now, and still is. The only memorable part of the soundtrack for me, unfortunately.
Upon further reflection, though, there were two other songs. Masquerade by Clan of Xymox, which was the song on the radio with David and Anna in the car. And Because I Love You (The Postman Song) by Stevie B, the song after David shot Kristin. And I suppose most of the soundtrack was decent; it just went under the radar initially.
There were a few other aspects that stood out, like:
The cinematography. For me, this also went under the radar initially. It was easy to miss. But like with the soundtrack, upon further reflection, I noticed that the cinematography was pretty decent. The lighting and color palette stood out the most with the cinematography.
The technical aspect of the camera work and specific choices with the camera movements. There was a Dolly zoom (?) once or twice. The two I remember were at the beginning of the film when David told Laura that Caleb told him to tell his family that he loved them and when David was standing outside after Anna turned her light off: the shot of coming out of her room and panning from left to right, to him, was good, too. There was also an Arc shot (?) or two: the one I remember was when Luke talked to David in the school hallway.
The action/fight sequences. I'll admit, this was less noteworthy. And I do wish this aspect was more prominent in the film. But the action-y/fight sequence parts we got were good enough, the one in the bar, specifically. That uppercut was brutal. Brutally awesome. The shootout sequence was decent enough, I suppose.
All-in-all, this film had more than enough things to speak about positively. The concept of programming and conditioning, and things in that vein, is fascinating to me and was one of the highlights. I wish that element had been more explored. It is what it is. And while the writing/some writing choices were "iffy," that didn't impact the whole film that much.
So, I thought this film was pretty entertaining to watch. It even seemed to have a little bit of rewatchability. It's unfortunate that its box office was less than the budget and that this film seems somewhat disliked. Then again, there seem to be plenty of people who "surprisingly" liked it a lot. I guess this film is underrated and somewhat "overrated" at the same time.
Other thoughts:
Dan Stevens' articulation of some words/lines throughout this film sounded similar to how Jonathan Silverman did so as Richard Parker in the Weekend at Bernie's films.
The way Leland Orser acted in this film reminded me of Chelsea Handler at times.
I noticed that you could see, while David was choking Anna, that he was barely squeezing her neck. I mean, of course not. It's acting, but you'd think something like that wouldn't be so obvious.
While David was saying his final lines, I was reminded of Riley Smith, specifically in The CW's Nancy Drew since that's the only thing I've seen him in. Dan Stevens looked like him. The way his mouth broke into a closed smile. How he said his final line. Extremely Riley Smith-esque.
Dan Stevens plays "The Guest" with about as much charisma as I can remember from any recent film lead. From moment one, the guy is as cool as can be. The guest's name is David and he is a mystery, but he is awesome in every imaginable way. From helping kid's with homework to carrying multiple kegs of beer to a party, David is nothing short of amazing.
The first half of this film is great but as David devolves into something else, so does the movie. The action scenes really fall flat and the climax is a cliched chase through a fun house. Believe me, you've seen it before. The ending really doesn't close up the story. That's okay with me, but the other person I watched this with was annoyed by it.
Even with those faults, I would definitely recommend this.
This is a wild ride. It surprised me on my first watch years ago. It's on Showtime and I was very eager to revisit. It's ridiculous and dumb in an endearing way. Despite having elements that I've seen million times before, it somehow feels fresh and I like how it goes from horror mystery to violent action thriller to outright silly slasher. There are more than a few scenes that utilize neon lighting and synth music to create an interesting style. I really like how the lead character is so mild-mannered, making his violent outbursts more intimidating. Great stuff.
What a great metaphor for how the military industrial complex sells itself to Americans by promising to deliver whatever they want while actually is ripping families apart and destroying us all.
Awesome soundtrack!
This movie seemed to want to be the next Drive but falls oh so short. The soundtrack, which could've been good, was wedged so aggressively into every scene that it was instead annoying and distracting. This movie lives the unfortunate space of being almost bad enough to be good. If they had leaned into the camp (that thumbs up at the end!? magic!), we could have had a blast with the weird acting, nonsensical plot, and too loud soundtrack. But alas, they stopped just short of the self-aware ham that would've put us somewhere fun and instead left us with a second half too boring to pay attention to.
This was a really good thriller-action flick with a unexpected plot twist half way through. Movie seemed very open-ended but maybe a sequel sometime soon would be really interesting. 7/10
I was super disappointed by this. As a fan of Dan Stevens I'd been meaning to see this, but put it off for a while. The first third of this movie was pretty intriguing and I thought it was going to be an interesting spin on the horror genre. Unfortunately, about halfway through it becomes a generic slasher movie, and by the last 20 minutes I had totally lost interest. I still watched the whole thing, but I feel robbed of my time.
I really wish this movie turned out differently. It feels like a waste of a perfectly good setup.
Dan Stevens plays charmingly creepy really well. That alone is probably enough of a reason for a lot of people to watch this movie.
Although the movie starts out slow and you might wonder where its all leading, suddenly it takes a turn half-way thru and things get good, get interesting.
If I didn't know some of Dan's work before, I would've said he's one of the worst actors ever. But I know he could do better. What a terrible, TERRIBLE movie. Complete waste of time.
Its just an OK teen flick movie.
Started nice, but went weird and somewhat unbelievable towards the end.
It got Certified Fresh on RT, which is why i watched this. I'm sure its a bug, dont expect anything special.
This movie was just freaking amazing and I can't recommend it enough to people. It is the love child of John Wick, Jason Bourne and Jason Voorhees. Haven't seen a film in ages that has truly made me want to watch it over and over again.
The Guest is an exciting and dramatic action film that’s full of mystery and intrigue. The story follows a returning soldier who pays a visit to the family of a fallen comrade that he promised to look in on, however the older daughter starts to have suspicions that he isn’t who he says he is. The leads, Dan Stevens and Maika Monroe, both give strong performances and do a good job at playing cat-and-mouse. Additionally, the climatic action sequence is especially well-done and escalates to an intense showdown. However, there’s a little too much ambiguity to the film, leaving several plot points open-ended. And, there are some pacing issues (particularly in the first half). Yet despite a couple of weaknesses, The Guest is an entertaining and suspenseful thriller.
Best soundtrack ever! All the mood is kinda original and darky in my opinion.
Very fun movie. Dan Stevens is great at playing the super nice and creepy ex military man. The soundtrack is great too.
It's like watching a mediocre Netflix show. The music was awful. If it was meant to sound 80's it failed. Iit souded more like the installation music on a bad virtual instrument. The acting was bad and the whole movie is predictable. Another case of critic hype.
I love this movie. The music is great, the action is great, somehow it's really funny, and Dan Stevens is just amazing. I loved his performance in this. He was so polite and charming. And then he killed people. And I liked it.
I'll be watching this movie a lot in the future!
This is like T-1000 came round for tea, and deep down you knew he was a ruthless unstoppable killing machine, but he used his powers of politeness to trick you into thinking he was a decent bloke by calling you sir or ma'am. His spell is only broken when you play goth tunes on the car stereo.
Off top, the acting isn't that great in this movie and the dialog can be cringe worthy at times but I found the first half of the movie mostly watchable. The second half of the movie is where things fall apart and you really have to suspend disbelief and forgive a few plot holes to get through it.
On a positive note the score was great.
This is the one of the best psychological thriller film I ever watched and immediately became one of my favorite films.
There isn't anything particularly original about the concept behind the guest but the movie is so well directed and engaging that it becomes very captivating. Adam Wingard shows that the outstanding You're Next was no fluke. Dan Stevens pulls off a challenging role as a charming young an with a lot to hide.
8.5/10. If you’d pitched me a showdown between Matthew Crawley from Downton Abbey and Lt. Daniels from The Wire, I would probably be on board, but I don’t think I could ever have imagined it would be this cool. But that’s sort of the trick of The Guest, a tremendous and intimate thriller about luring you in with something that feels comforting and familiar, almost too much so, and then explores the unexpected consequences of what comes next.
When David Collins shows up to the Peterson household, the family of his slain fellow solider, he is unnervingly perfect. He smiles in just the right way; he begs off in a disarming fashion when offered any bit of kindness, and tugs on just the right strings to where, before you know it, he feels like an indelible and vital part of your life. Each of the Petersons fall under his spell at some point, to where he becomes a de facto part of the family.
A great deal of credit belongs to Dan Stevens, showing and incredible amount of range and talent in the way he inhabits the titular guest, a young veteran who is perfection embodied but with something that seems just a little off. Initially I bristled a bit at the character, because there was a sort of uncanny valley effect that belied David’s initial interactions with the Peterson family. But as the film progresses, it becomes apparent that it’s an intentional and impressive choice from Stevens. He expertly conveys the way in which David both seems like a peerless individual, one who blends in to any social situations and has those around him warm up to him almost instantly, but also like someone who is putting on an act. It’s a very good act, and one that he’s clearly perfected over a long time, but one that is unnerving in how perfectly pitched it is.
That’s the greatest achievement of the film and its lead actor – the way that David embodies such warmth and such coldness at the same time. While David does terrible things, and seems insincere or at least a little mercenary in his attempts to make good with the Petersons, you get the impression that he genuinely wants to help them. Whether it comes from a sense of obligation to his fallen friend Caleb or a genuine affection for his inadvertent ward Luke, Stevens gives the impression that even if the emotions have been drained out of David and replaced with military efficiency and impulses he himself has no control over, there’s a piece of him still in there, a piece that cares about the family he’s so slyly made himself a part of.
But that just makes it all the more frightening when David shows what he’s capable of, of the smoldering beast that lurks within. Much of that, again, comes from Stevens’s performance in the title role. Those brief moments where he drops that unblinking smile, where he gazes off into nothing or focuses his eyes on some troublemaker are truly frightening. Stevens’s offers only glimpses into this individual who at times seems as much machine as man.
A great deal of that sense, however, comes from the incredibly-crafted sequences when David reveals his military training and puts it into action. When David roughs up a group of Luke’s high school bullies, he is preternaturally effective at it, with no wasted movement as he decimates these young men in seemingly effortless fashion. When he calmly lines up his shot to take out the last remaining witness at an arms deal, the cold precision of it is just as unnerving. When he gets into a firefight with military contractors at the Peterson home, he moves like an animal through the house, making his exit. And the film’s final big set piece, a heart-pumping stalk and chase through a mirror-lined, smoke-filled haunted house stands out as one of the most exciting and tense sequences on film in the last decade.
The mood of these scenes comes through not just in the images on the screen, but in the film’s use of sound. The most obvious of these is the film’s synth-heavy, gothic score. Most of the music employed is diegetic, lending to the unreal quality of these sequences, and giving it a throwback flavor that makes David’s pursuit of his prey seem of a piece with Michael Myers in Halloween. But just as impressive is the foley work that goes into David’s takedowns. When David is fighting a group of rowdy teenagers, you hear their bones crack, you hear their bodies thump, and it is immediately disquieting and an indication of how quietly fearsome this man really is.
David represents, in a very heightened way, our national fears about soldiers coming home from war. The Peterson patriarch explicitly references PTSD, and there’s a palpable sense that The Guest is engaging with a funhouse mirror version of this concern. In the same way that soldiers come home and can feel like different people to their loved ones after having been changed by their experiences at war, David is essentially a replacement for Caleb in the Peterson family, and he really is a different person. He seems familiar, filling the space in the family that Caleb used to in a way that makes everyone take a shine to him to one degree or another, and yet there is something lurking behind the practiced smile made to put you at ease. There are parts of David that he cannot turn off, violent parts, that lead him to do things he finds as regrettable as he does unavoidable.
He is also a rebuke or a response to our stories about soldiers being enhanced to become more effective weapons of war. He is a dark mirror of Captain America, a more personal and frightening version of Jason Bourne, a strikingly competent, chameleon-like man at arms who has been ravaged and warped by what’s been done to him rather than improved by it.
And yet, he ingratiates himself into the Peterson family. Laura Peterson sees him as her surrogate son. Spencer Peterson sees him as a buddy. Luke Peterson views him as an idol, a role model who makes him better equipped for the world. And Anna Peterson (in a great performance by Maika Monroe of It Follows fame) makes him a mix tape and sees him as hunky protector. But it’s Anna who notices how things have become too perfect, how the family’s obstacles have mysteriously fallen down around them, often in deadly fashion. That is the core of The Guest -- a continuing sense that everything is perfect, that everything is falling into place, but in a way that feels off, that feels wrong, that feels strange and unnerving even when you seem to get everything you want.
Never trust a guest, they might not be what they seem.. Now this is smashing, action packed, a great cast, and comes with a sweet sound track that just fits the movie all the way through.. looking forward to seeing more films from Dan stevens (david) Quiz- How many times does he say sorry?? haha 7/10
Very predictable from the beginning. Lots of clichès (there's even a cliffhanger) and the soundtrack was incredibly annoying.
A soldier (Dan Stevens) befriends the family of a fallen comrade. There’s more to him than meets the eye, which quickly becomes evident as people in the town begin to die.
Adam Wingard pulls off a ballsy move with The Guest by focusing on a classic idea in Hollywood; the outsider inserting himself into a small community. It’s always a great premise and made even better when there’s a sense of mystery around the central character.
In this case the mystery lies not with the plot, Wingard hides very little there, but with the character’s motivations. We never know what Stevens’ character is really thinking, and initially one might even question if he is even a human being. It’s genuinely creepy and instantly sets a unique tone for the film from the first five minutes.
The fundamental driving force behind the plot is a little silly and detracts from the suspense. The synth soundtrack, although effective for the most part, feels a little jarring sometimes. The film is peppered with moments where Wingard tries a little too hard, and again this takes us out of the action.
That said for the most part The Guest marries a disturbing central performance, a classic old premise and an 80s soundtrack to make a thriller like no other. It’s an experience; a hard sell on paper but a definite success on screen.
http://benoliver999.com/film/2015/10/14/theguest/
Dan Stevens is perfectly bad ass. I love Adam Wingard movies.
awesome. expected finally but liked it anyway. love mysteries movies
I rated it a 4. not sure if i should go lower. "Rubbish." was the first word i said after it ended.
The movie had a lot of potential. Up until the hour mark it portrayed characteristics of a great movie, but the story started falling short after he killed Anna's friend Craig and his "contact". Instead of bringing in the corporation that's hunting him, they could have twisted the plot by revolving the story around the dead soldier and connected more to the subject. It left too many holes in the story. But like I said it also had some good aspects to it - especially the acting and the cinematography... The writing on the other hand, seemed like they rushed it off and that ruined a movie that had great potential!
Terminator meets Drive, sort of.
Y la moraleja es... Ninguna. Pero mierda, es buena la película.
[descargando el soundtrack]
Reminded me a bit of Drive. Very stylish, superb soundtrack and the main guy handles things very savagely. The only let down for me were the last 15 minutes.
8/10
I liked it... despite that at the end it seems to miss something was very entertaining and the suspense (at least in the first part) was really good and I liked that they explain almost nothing about who the guy is.
Too bad it kind of falls apart in the second half of the movie where the suspense of the first half takes a back seat and the story becomes kind of ridiculous.
What I loved about The Guest is that it doesn't take itself too seriously and that's exactly what made it such a fun ride.
There's no logic here and there's a feeling of pointlessness when you start thinking about the film's plot, but it was very entertaining and suspenseful nonetheless.
Dan Stevens gave a hell of performance and I loved how the director tested how far the audience was willing to remain sympathetic towards the main character.
Shout by René RåenBlockedParent2014-12-24T23:25:03Z
Great soundtrack, and as alejandro_mhr says, it doesn't take itself too seriously. I enjoyed every moment of it. It was just the senseless action-filled movie I was looking for.
The performance of Dan Stevens noted itself for me, and I'll be watching him further! Great acting, great pushing of limits.