The Guest
Dir: Adam Wingard
2014
***
Adam Wingard is better known as an up and coming horror director although many of his 'horror' films are really thrillers with scares, so The Guest is representative of his work and what he does best. In The Guest, Adam Wingard raises a question and reveals a mystery ready to be solved. The mysterious guest is played perfectly by Dan Stevens who really makes the film, the rest of the cast are fine but no one else really stands out, although that is probably for the best. The intensity is high in the first hour and as the plot thickened, I found myself edging closer and closer to the edge of my seat. The big reveal wasn't disappointing either, who the guest really is and what his purpose was, wasn't anywhere near as ridiculous as I'd expected and so the believability remained in tact and the impending sense of dread grew ever so slightly stronger. The score to the film intensified this dread dramatically and it is my favorite of 2014 after Under the Skin. The only flaw in the whole film is, unfortunately and rather frustratingly so, during the final confrontation. The two kids of the film are chased by the Guest through a newly built maze in their High school that has been elaborately decorated for Halloween. What had been an excellent thriller, suddenly turns into something you'd expect from a cheap horror film and a sort of parody of the last 10 minutes of The Man With The Golden Gun. Why on earth would you do that? I had a tasty appetizer and a hearty main course, I just feel that the desert was dropped on the way to my table but the waiter still charged me for it.