Review of The Guest (2014) by Yorkman — 16 Jan 2016

The Guest is a film that tries to be part thriller, part horror movie and part drama. Unfortunately it fails on all counts.

The movie starts off well enough, introducing the main characters and some exposition to let the audience filter into the actual premise of the narrative.

But it tails off very quickly, becoming a very tired and cliche-ridden spectacle that is entertaining enough.... Yet ultimately unfulfilling.

The cast is very good, with Dan Stevens in particular eating up the screen as the Soldier who becomes 'the guest' at the home of the Peterson family due to his being a close army buddy of their dead son who dies overseas.

The direction is fairly by the book, and offers a kind of retro feel to the 'horror' elements, there are very few of the modern 'jump scares' that seem to have permeated horror flicks in the new Millenium.

What was disappointing (to me anyway) was the musical score, it was terribly bad. Generic, almost library style,suspense/shock/horror tropes everyone has heard a million times before in some form or other. The licensed music wasn't my cup of tea, a niche-style I couldn't even try to put a genre name to, just made the final scene (which played the 'main' track very loudly!!) difficult to watch due to the distraction.

Overall, it's not an unwatchable film by any means. I think it would have been better if it had embraced its horror elements more wholeheartedly, and dropped some of the drama parts.