THE GUEST directed by Adam Wingard, written by Simon Barrett, with Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Brendan Meyer and Sheila Kelley. A D Films release. 99 minutes. Opens Friday (October 17). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNN
A stranger (Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens, sporting a perfect Middle-American accent) comes to a small town to visit a fallen soldier’s family, is invited to stay… and then things get nasty.
After the wickedly clever You’re Next – a Midnight Madness hit in 2011 – Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett’s next feature is a self-aware homage to the early films of John Carpenter, and one in particular. But even if you’ve never seen a Carpenter film, you can enjoy The Guest as an energetic and clever thriller that takes a premise and runs with it, pitting Stevens’s charming time bomb against the dead soldier’s sister (a terrific Maika Monroe), who sees through him almost immediately and tries to figure out what’s really going on.
The action is inventive, the characters well-drawn and the climax… well, it’s not original, exactly, but in a movie like this that’s kind of the point.
