Review of The Guest (2014) by Neli O — 10 Dec 2014

The Guest is an action movie directed by Adam Wingard. The film hooks the audiences almost throughout the movie using the mysterious and charming David. The main structure of the film was to progressively add information to the plot while still maintaining an ingredient of mystery.

The opening of the movie delivers a very heartfelt and familiar topic; the death of a soldier and the impact and his family. By a knock at the door we are introduced to David. David intends to familiarize himself with the family stating, "... I knew your son, we were in the same platoon". In hopes of gaining the family's trust, he signals himself in a portrait that hangs in the livingroom. David has cunningly made the family feel as though he is part of the family and close friend to their deceased family member. However, the mystery remains as to why David is there and his intentions on staying. At this particular point we have more question than answers.

At the beginning we knew almost to nothing about David. Through a telephone call we're informed that David was reported dead. Here we are seeing a correlation; we were introduced to David by a knock at the door and now we know more of him by a phone call. The knock at the door and the phone call are vehicles; these deliver new information in a subtle manner. This tactic adds more to the plot while keeping the suspense because we never know what's on the other end. Hence it began with a mysterious man and has become a person who is running away for some apparent reason. Again we are seeing input of information but many more questions arising.

First we see that David his helping the family in different ways but then we see that he's a very violent person. At first we justify his violence as he defends the boy from bullies. However then we see that he kills two men after supposedly wanting to purchase some handguns and blackmails the girl's boyfriend. The killing of the two men set off a chain of events that almost completely reveal who David really is. The bloody scenes are for dramatic effects but the important part is when the soldier explains what David really is. Finally we understand who David is and we are awaiting to see how the whole film wraps up.

As we have seen, the film was structured in such a way as to keep the audience questioning therefore engaged on the events occurring throughout it. David still remains a mystery primarily because he's a lab rat for the army and we don't know what else he can do. At this point we see David as more as a robot however, we see glimpses of his humanity throughout the movie for instance, when David is stabbed he says, "... you did the right thing...You're not the bad guy". Most ironically, David is stabbed by a switchblade knife he gave to the boy. We can say that David had an internal struggle and that the humane part of David was prepping the boy to defeat him.