THE GUEST – Like 'You're Next', like so many recent cool, self-conscious horror / thriller / genre items, Adam Wingard's 'The Guest' is very much about the play of images, surfaces, textures and references. What do I mean by that? Well, it's shot to perfection, frame after frame carrying the weight of classic Carpenter, whilst the synthesiser soundtrack sounds like the eighties beamed in from the future (which is I guess what 'now' sounds like). It's a kind of cinema that hits the visual cortex rather than those bits of the brain which are more bothered with meaning and sense, which is good job, because the plot becomes increasingly derailed as it trundles on. Downton Abbey guy plays an honourable discharge who worms his way into the household of a family whose son died in combat. He's only too happy to help the family's youngest in his struggle against the high school bullies, and takes a shine to the household's indie chick sister, to the point of murdering her drug dealer mates and fitting up her boyfriend. Yes, those steely good looks and that unflappable manner had to conceal an utterly remorseless psychopathic predator, didn't they? Turns out it all has something to do with a top secret military experiment that went wrong for the purposes of latter day B-cinema, but we never really find out what really happened, and by the time the hokey red mist in a hall-of-mirrors showdown comes round, chances are you'll have pegged it all as an exercise in pop-corn stylistics and won't care about a sensible resolution. I'm not moaning about this, because I NEVER care about movies making sense. I mean look at most of the stuff I review on here, for christ's sake. I'd be a hypocrite if I were to have a go at 'The Guest' as being somehow empty and a bit barren because of its lack of depth and emphasis on looking good. Take Winding-Refn – he does basically the same kind of thing, and people think he's dead ace. 'The Guest' can't quite scale those heights of neon lit moodiness, and neither is it as good as 'You're Next', for my money. But it is a highly entertaining example of the kind of really slick, well made genre film which is becoming increasingly visible and palatable to a mainstream audience.
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