Y'all Seen This One?: The Guest (2014)
Some thoughts on The Guest (2014), a movie I watched for the first time recently.
Note: There will be spoilers throughout for The Guest, but I will try to ease into the biggest spoiler as I get toward the end. There’s also a spoiler for The Pope’s Exorcist right in the beginning, but if anything, it might make some of you want to watch it. I’ll let you make up your own mind with that one.
Good day or evening. I’m introducing a series I plan on adding entries to throughout the year when time allows—and years to come if I remember to—called “Y’all Seen This One?” I’m open to changing it but at this point, telling me to change it would only make me double down so here we are.
Basically, it’s a series where I watch and write about new-to-me movies. Obviously, this kind of thing is subjective so putting hard criteria on it would just be a headache. So, if you see any of these titles and go, “uhhh, everyone’s seen that”, then great. I’m happy for you. Kind of the point here, pal. If you haven’t heard of it either, amazing. We both get to go on this journey together.
It could be any movie from any time period. It could be a beloved classic that everyone but me has seen. It could a movie that tanked at the box office and slowly developed a cult following over the years. So, in the spirit of the latter, I’m kicking things off with 2014’s The Guest. It’s all been leading to this for this movie…a Substack post.
And while I’ve already added a spoiler warning, I’ll add another here: I am fully spoiling this movie. IF YOU DON’T WANT THE MOVIE SPOILED, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER. I cannot help you beyond this point.
I’m the kind of anxious person that loves movies with anxiety-inducing situations. I’ve warmed up to horror movies in recent years but the way I’ve largely indulged that feeling is through crime thrillers. I’ve written here and there about my love of the Coen brothers who through the crime thriller perfected one of my favorite genres: Morons Getting Way in Over Their Heads. People often think the Coens are being condescending or mocking toward their characters when I think what they actually tapped into is how stupid and careless people become when greed and selfishness take over.
The other thing I like in a movie is a ridiculous premise handled with deadly seriousness. One of my favorite movies from the last couple of years is The Pope’s Exorcist where Russell Crowe plays the titular pope’s exorcist who destroys a demon and promises to fight more in at least 199 sequels. One of the big reveals in the movie is that the Spanish Inquisition happened because of demonic possession. Ooooookay. It’s a moment where you have to make it abundantly clear that this is a fictional film loosely based on a man who told some whoppers in his day1.
The Guest is a crime thriller about a stranger showing up at a family’s doorstep and while it didn’t do well at the time, it served as a calling card of sorts for Dan Stevens as David Collins, the titular Guest. Cucko was a movie I saw last year that I thought was mostly fine but had a really great supporting performance from Stevens as a friendly but untrustworthy German doctor2. Before then, I’d seen him in the early seasons of Downton Abbey. I’ve yet to see it but he’s also in a movie called Abigail where he plays a scuzzy ex-cop fighting a vampire kid. Don’t get me started on Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga which is where I first saw how weird he likes to go. He was also The Beast in the live-action Beauty in the Beast. Haven’t seen it so I have no opinion. But he’s been slowly carving out a weird lane for himself over the years and he’s interested me enough that I decided to go back to the movie that broke him in, on the American side at least.
In a nutshell, The Guest is about what happens when someone who looks like Dan Stevens shows up at your house. In general, I’m not a fan of people randomly showing up at my doorstep, lest I’m forced to call upon my training3 and defend myself. However, if I opened the door and encountered…this (signals below)…
There’s no point in questioning the plausibility of a situation like this because this is not that kind of movie. It’s the kind of movie where a handsome stranger shows up at someone’s doorstep and slowly starts causing mayhem all around them. And he’s so damn handsome that it’s a while before anyone wises up to what they’ve gotten themselves into. When David shows up in town, there are bar fights, schoolyard scraps, and eventually certain people start turning up dead.
When we’re introduced to the Peterson family, we learn they are grieving the loss of the oldest son, Caleb, a soldier who died in action serving in Afghanistan. All of this is introduced with the lightest touch, I think director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett really thread the needle well with setting up this tragic backstory, so we understand what buttons are going to be pushed by David’s arrival.
Initially, David introduces himself as a former US Army sergeant who served with Caleb and was his best friend. To honor his late friend, he decided to visit his family and look out for them. And when those dreamy eyes are telling you everything is going to be taken care of, how could you not fall for it? He’s a little rough around the edges, but slowly over time he ingratiates himself into the family unit. Never mind him beating up a bunch of teenagers in a bar, he’s totally fine otherwise.
If there are any nitpicks I have for a movie almost designed to scoff at you for finding nitpicks in it, it’s the way the family takes him right in. I realize I’m contradicting myself when I’ve already said I’d be conflicted in this situation, but as David’s visit plays out, none of the performances of the family seem to be on the same page. They’re not bad—it is fun seeing Leland Orser of ER fame as the dad—but it felt less like a family and more like people that just happen to be around each other. However, I guess you could make the case that this is what a family looks and feels like after going through such a loss, disconnected and milling around their family home. I’m also probably thinking about this too much because this is the least important aspect of the movie that I am pinheadedly nitpicking.
The standout performance of the family—especially seeing where her career has gone since then—is Maika Monroe who’s gone on to attain Scream Queen status with her work. Her breakthrough, It Follows, was released in 2014 as well. And I wasn’t wild about the movie itself, but I did think she was great in Longlegs from last year. As Anna, the daughter of the family, she’s charmed by David at first like everyone else and even goes as far to make a mix CD, which becomes important in the climactic battle. In the end, she ends up being the one who’s suspicious enough of David that she finds out the truth and ends up being the one who squares off with him in the end.
To get into why I love this Dan Stevens performance, I have to give away the biggest spoiler of the movie. Early on, I mentioned that I love a ridiculous premise that is handled with deadly seriousness. Him showing up isn’t the ridiculous part. We eventually find out that he—holding for your surprised reaction—is not actually Caleb’s best friend. In fact, David Collins was a test subject in a military medical experiment and is programmed to kill anyone who might compromise his identity. As charming as David is at first, there’s a stiltedness in Stevens’ performance. Not to say he’s acting badly, but there’s a rigidity that you could easily chalk up to him being a former sergeant. He’s charming but as we see when he beats up a group of teenagers at a bar, it’s clear David’s got a lot more going on than the Petersons’ realized.
When we find out he is quite literally a killing machine as he takes out both Peterson parents to avoid being caught, the stakes are raised dramatically. It helps to have Lance Reddick (RIP) show up as the head of a special forces team to explain the David situation with an authority that sells the ridiculousness. The last act culminates in David trying to kill Anna in a school gymnasium before being stabbed by Luke, the youngest son, with a butterfly knife David gave to him as a gift.
And like a good thriller, just when we think the dust has settled and all the corpses have been gathered, Anna sees David disguised as a firefighter escaping the crime scene. Roll credits. Brilliant.
I’ve now spent around 1800 words writing about a movie that is best enjoyed without analyzing it deeply. But I am who I am, so here we are. Like I said before, this is not the kind of movie that requires deep analysis. It requires the viewer to A) think Dan Stevens is handsome enough to forcefully move into someone’s house with no problem and B) somehow root for him to get away even when he is clearly the villain. I really went on a journey with this one.
Alright, well this was fun. We should do it again sometime. If you’d like to keep up…
Fr. Gabriele Amorth, if you can believe it, was maybe not entirely honest about his accomplishments—IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT—but that is something I will leave for you to dig into on your own time. I didn’t pay my research assistant for this one.
Never good a sign when your character has a German accent. I’m also a dumb American and realize this not entirely fair to the people of Germany. All that said, I’ll be nice and leave the history book closed for this one.
I watched a few self-defense videos on YouTube and I have a bat under my bed. But there’s a Marc Maron joke I think about all the time when he talks about keeping a bat under his: “If you’re gonna hit a guy with a bat, you better be a guy who’s hit someone with a bat before.”