From the director of You’re Next.
Netflix has no shortages of great new additions over the last few weeks.
Keeping up with the trend, they’ve just dropped a criminally underseen action thriller from 2014 – The Guest.
Starring Dan Stevens (Beauty and the Beast) The Guest centres around a string of mysterious deaths that leads a teenager to become suspicious of a soldier (Stevens) who showed up on her family’s doorstep and claimed to be a friend of her dead brother.
Starring alongside Stevens is Maika Monroe, Leland Orser, Sheila Kelley, Brendan Meyer, and the late, great Lance Reddick.
Despite the excellent supporting cast, it’s Stevens mesmerising and villainous performance as the mysteriously charming soldier, as well as the mix of genres including comedy, mystery and horror.
The horror element comes straight from the playbook of director Adam Wingard, who previously helmed films like You’re Next and Death Note and loves to blend different genres together.
Wingard and Stevens are also teaming up once again in the upcoming Godzilla X Kong film, a far cry from The Guest, but a show of the success he’s found in lower-budget flicks.
While it may lack the true horror of You’re Next, The Guest is a very fun thriller/horror that doesn’t take itself too serious and isn’t afraid to jump into entertaining genre tropes.
If you’re still not convinced, check out the reviews for The Guest below:
Time Magazine – “The Guest ravels smartly; and, after too many herky-jerky entries in the faux-found-footage subgenre, it’s nice to see a scare film with a pearly visual style, which gives the enterprise the patina of both elegance and plausibility.”
Grantland – “The crazier the movie gets, the better it is — the climax is set in a homemade fun house complete with billowing artificial fog, and it works first as comedy, then as mild suspense, and, finally, as surprise.”
Slate – “The Guest isn’t here to deliver an earnest social message about the state of veterans’ affairs. Instead, the way good horror movies do, it channels our collective fear, guilt, and rage by creating a monster.”
Rolling Stone – “Dan Stevens is mesmerizing as the avenger, helping director Adam Wingard turn The Guest into a blast of wicked mirth and malice.”
LA Weekly – “The Guest transcends the genre with characters who could have come out of a more serious movie. When they’re in peril, we actually care.”
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