The Guest delivers a B-movie approach to a senstive topic.
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I'll tell anyone who listens how much I love Dan Stevens career arc. Stevens began his career as a heartthrob in the wildly popular period drama Downton Abbey, but was killed off after he expressed a desire to do other things. Those other things have been...a wild collection of movie roles, mostly in genre fare, as weird little guys with funny accents. The Daniel Radcliffe if you will. And it all got started here, with his role as the mysterious stranger "David," in The Guest. And since it had been a bit since I first watched this one, I thought I would revisit the movie and see what stuck out this time around.
The Setup
The movie centers around the Peterson family who are doing their best to get by after the eldest son Caleb was killed in the war in Afghanistan. So when a man named David, claiming to be from Caleb's unit arrives on the doorstep, the Peterson's offer him food and shelter until he gets on his feet. But once David arrives, bodies start dropping all around town.
Good news about The Guest: I still think it's a great movie. And one that has a lot more in common with the pointed B-movies of the eighties that it takes inspiration from than I initially thought.
Something I've discussed before, is that B-movies are inherently trashy or silly. They're meant as cheap entertainment with a primal hook that you can make on a budget. In this case, we have the dread of what feels like a good deed, letting a veteran who served with your son into your home, turning into a blood-drenched nightmare because this handsome man with the piercing blue eyes is actually a murder machine.
But that directness means they can often address broad or sensitive issues without subtlety. We're talking how They Live addresses consumerism or how Machete addresses immigration. In both cases, the answer is to take firearms or bladed weapons to the whole enterprise, but no one gets upset because these are movies where Roddy Piper and Keith David beat the shit out of each other over glasses for ten minutes or Danny Trejo uses a man's innards as a rope.
And The Guest is very much in that vein...about soldiers coming home after war and addressing the horror if an actual action hero type arrived in your life to solve your problems.
There have been a number of movies about soldiers coming home from America's wars in the Middle East, and almost all of them have centered around PTSD, the difficulty in dealing with said PTSD and wounds with limited government resources, and the emotional fallout from all of it (soldiers, their families and beyond).
Which is exactly what Mr. Peterson is worried about when he realizes his wife let David into their house. "What if he has PTSD?!" is said in a muffled conversation.
So by being calm and measured, David feels like a best case scenario. He doesn't appear to have PTSD, is amicable to his host family and also demonstrates an interest in helping them out whether it's helping the youngest son with bullies or making sure a handsy/physical boyfriend is put in his place at a party. So much so that no one wants to ask questions about David's background. He appears to be filling the void that Caleb left.
So by being calm and measured, David feels like a best case scenario. He doesn't appear to have PTSD, is amicable to his host family and also demonstrates an interest in helping them out whether it's helping the youngest son with bullies or making sure a handsy/physical boyfriend is put in his place at a party. So much so that no one wants to ask questions about David's background. He appears to be filling the void that Caleb left.
But something is clearly wrong. This is too easy and David's comfort and competence in carrying out horrific violence is...startling.
And this is where the "why having an action hero enter your life would actually suck," comes around. David's first violent onscreen outburst is the perfect place to start.
In most action movies, the first "soft-spoken bad-ass reveals what he's capable of," feels triumphant. Like, thank god we've finally got someone that can take care of things.
But everything about David's first fight feels off. Because he hunts for this fight. It's not like he asked to be left alone, got pushed too far, and then fought back. He tracks them to a bar. Intentionally insults their masculinity and then brutally injures every single one while barely leaving Luke unscathed. He doesn't act like a hero. He acts like a predator. Because he is. And his only solution to every problem is aggression or violence.
Which is also a solid metaphor for what the military grinds young men like David into. Individuals who are shaved down to serve one purpose: violence. Hence why the loosely defined military industrial complex guys who show up to eliminate David, not only make things infinitely worse, but also indicate that they don't view David so much as a person, but as a malfunctioning weapon...that they made.
Of course, you can turn off your brain and still enjoy the uneasy thrills of watching this handsome Terminator wreak havoc on an American small town while a final girl, in everything but name, does her best to get someone to listen to her and fend him off. Often in over-the-top action beats that feature David pulling off incredible feats of bad-assery with a "look what you made me do," kind of attitude about the whole thing.
That's the B-movie silliness that lets the movie's darkest and most probing ideas go down smooth.
It also doesn't hurt that our main cast are all leaning on roles or types that play to their strengths. As much as I've jokingly referred to Stevens as a handsome man, his strength as an actor is a lack of concern for his image. He'll put on a weird voice or accent, act like a fool, or play a repugnant piece of shit in a movie, sometimes all three at once, if you want him to. Because this is an anti-heartthrob kind of move. You're a bad-ass, but you're also a stone-cold murderer who will hurt...anyone. Not something most guys looking to be a romantic lead in the future would embrace, but Stevens does it right.
Likewise, Maika Monroe has more or less crafted a career out of women whom no one listens to or believes or women beset by a psychopath/entity. See how It Follows came out this same year, 2014. In particular she's really good at presenting these character's rough edges which gives everyone's hesitation to listen, credibility. Like if you put cool, collected David played by Stevens in a room versus Monroe's Anna, very easy to see why parents side with David.
That being said, I should avoid hyperbole when talking about the movie. Because it really is a B-movie that takes inspiration from its eighties brethren including it's over-the-top approach to violence and pulsing synth score (brought out before that became a more regular thing). Basically it's deeper than you might expect and just as fun as I remembered, which is the best case scenario for a rewatch.
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