Paste’s ABCs of Horror 3 is a 26-day project that highlights some of our favorite horror films from each letter of the alphabet. The only criteria: The films chosen can’t have been used in our previous Century of Terror, a 100-day project to choose the best horror film of every year from 1920-2019, nor previous ABCs of Horror entries. With many heavy hitters out of the way, which movies will we choose?
When you need an actor to steal a scene in your genre movie by fully inhabiting a colorfully eccentric character, you call for Dan Stevens. The year 2024 has been a showcase for this modern Hollywood maxim: Look no further than Cuckoo, or Abigail, or even Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, for that matter. The English actor’s modus operandi has become to be the best and most memorable element of anything he happens to be in, regardless of its abject quality in a vacuum. It’s won him a visible fanbase in the wake of his starring turn in FX’s Legon in particular, but even then, Stevens’ most magnetic overall performance is still one that has gone entirely too underappreciated by anyone outside of genre geek circles, most likely because it came from before he was a household name with anyone other than Downton Abbey fans. You want to see Dan Stevens at his very best, his most Stevens-esque? Then you need to go back and revisit Adam Wingard’s The Guest.
Yes, Adam Wingard, the director of that latest soulless duo of entries in Legendary’s Godzilla series, films that have entirely discarded any sense of weight or mass from their kaiju in the name of reveling in totally ungrounded CGI monster-mashing chaos. That Adam Wingard, the guy who once also needlessly remade The Blair Witch Project into a noisy funhouse attraction. It’s easy to be unaware that this guy, now seemingly a hired studio gun for CGI-laden bonanzas, was once primarily known for his skill in shepherding relatively low budget thrillers and horror flicks to shockingly effective results. That he did as early as 2010’s A Horrible Way to Die and 2011’s delightful neo-slasher You’re Next, which I wrote about in the first installment of this very series. Wingard’s early work revolves not around FX flashiness but getting the absolute most out of his performers, and nowhere is that more true than The Guest, when he first worked with Dan Stevens.
From the very first moment Stevens turns around to face the camera in The Guest, he radiates the most calming, capably assured aura of confidence you will ever see on screen. Standing nonchalantly on the front porch, he introduces himself to a middle-aged mother as David Collins, a just-returned soldier who has come back from deployment in Afghanistan. There, he says he served with her son. He was there, in fact, when her son died a few months earlier. The grief-stricken woman reacts like she’s having new life breathed into her, like she’s just received a message from her beloved son on The Other Side. Can you blame her? David is quiet, soft-spoken, respectful in the extreme. She invites him in immediately. Seconds after meeting him, she’s already smiling and crying, undergoing powerful emotional catharsis, rescued from her malaise. He has the demeanor of someone you’d ask to watch your home and pets while you’re away, even though you just met him today. When he looks in your direction, you can’t turn away.
Of course, we the audience already know that something is wrong–it would be hard to miss after Wingard throws up the title card in the film’s opening moments, in the iconic John Carpenter Title Font, no less. It’s a bit of an ostentatious reference for horror geeks, but it does set expectations perfectly: The Guest proudly wears its influences on its sleeve. Carpenter’s Halloween is absolutely one of them, right down to the preponderance of pumpkins and houses preparing for Halloween night. The other unmistakeable reference point would be The Terminator, but The Guest is more like if Arnold’s T-800 had immaculate social skills and decided to move in with John Connor’s family first to get the lay of the land. He’s a ruthless killer, but you can have a beer with the guy!
And rest assured, everyone wants to pal around with David, even initially resistant high school student Anna (Maika Monroe, the same year as It Follows), who misses her deceased brother but applies a bit more scrutiny than others to the mysterious visitor’s story. Unlike her father, who goes from wanting David gone to drunkenly begging him to extend his stay within the course of 24 hours, Anna (who even has the Sarah Conner diner waitress job) has some resistance to the way David manages to insidiously prey on everyone’s need for emotional validation, but even she can’t hold out for too long–not after David’s little touches, like complimenting her music and asking for a mixtape. They’re seemingly tiny things, but he seems to know exactly what to say to make any person feel valued, to make them immediately start treating him as an emotional crutch, a protector, a tool to lift them out of despair. Every time he begins his “I really should leave and get out of your hair” routine, you know he’s only drawing the family in deeper.
And that’s the slow-burn nature of The Guest, which keeps you balanced on a knife’s edge, wondering about David’s true nature and his actual intentions, right up until the third act arrives with a neck-breaking tonal shift so jarring that I found myself laughing uncontrollably at the sheer audacity of it the first time I watched the film. It’s the mother of all third act inversions, a switch-flipping instance in which Wingard’s film (and Stevens as protagonist/antagonist) suddenly ditches its status quo as a well-acted thriller 70 minutes into the game, becoming a completely bonkers, over-the-top action slasher hybrid instead. If that sounds hard to believe, it’s because it will likely leave you totally incredulous, mouth on the floor as you marvel at how thoroughly the vibe has transformed in the space of a couple of minutes. Wingard makes an audacious choice that really doesn’t seem like it should work, and yet it does. And he has Stevens’ total commitment to the character to thank.
The Guest is a film that manages to be equally compelling in its extremes, for very different reasons. As we’re introduced to David and he worms his way into the family’s daily routine, Stevens’ quiet intensity, charisma and sheer cool factor makes him a character you desperately want to know more about. Wingard wisely never fills us in on too much at the end of the day, allowing the hilariously violent tonal shift to land with more savage impact. David remains an enigma, and Stevens sees to it that there’s plenty of material to revisit and expound upon if the creative team ever decides to return for a sequel. Perhaps if enough viewers develop an appreciation for Stevens’ finest hour, he’ll grace us by inhabiting David one more time.
Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more film writing.
