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Sep 17, 2014 By Austin Trunick Issue #51 - September/October 2014 - alt-J

Young veteran David drops in unannounced on the grieving Peterson family. He served with their son in Afghanistan and was with him when he was killed; he’s following through on a deathbed promise he made to look in on the soldier’s surviving family. They offer him their departed son’s bed to crash in, and the helpful David brightens the Petersons’ lives until their children start digging at the secrets he hides under his handsome exterior.

Director Adam Wingard’s latest is a throwback film in the most enthusiastic and wonderfully twisted way; it utilizes the best elements of 1980s horror, sci-fi, and action filmmaking and mashes them into a Grade-A, self-aware homage to cult cinema. The Guest takes the tight action of the first Terminator, bathes it in Dario Argento’s feverish, kaleidoscopic color palette, and adds a pulsing John Carpenter-esque electronic soundtrack courtesy of Steve Moore and Gatekeeper. (This is Kill Bill-level appropriation, handled masterfully.) Dan Stevens is perfectly cast as the film’s unnerving imposer. The former Downton Abbey star conveys a genuinely disturbing nuance to underlie his leading-man looks; he dives gung-ho into a role which purposefully winks at the audience at nearly every turn.

For genre nuts, this can’t be recommended enough.

www.theguestmovie.com

Author rating: 8/10