The Guest

It's been said that if you can produce a horror film that scares 60% of the people who watch it, you've already made a classic. We all have things that scare us, and things that don't. The Guest places me firmly in the 40%. I've heard people rave, but I just didn't enjoy it. If a horror movie is going to have an invisible villain he should be a monster of some kind, like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers. Occasionally you can get by with a character so fascinating that you don't care about his Mary Sue status, like Hannibal Lector. Unfortunately, this movie has neither.

This film has some obvious similarities to The Hitcher. Both have a murderous drifter, whose completely unstoppable except when the plot says otherwise, and who seems determined to inflict suffering on those around them. Furthermore, both are famed as truly scary movies, which I find downright silly.

The movie actually has a fairly solid premise: A family is mourning the loss of their son Caleb in Afghanistan, and are unexpectedly visited by a member of his unit named David (Dan Stevens). David ingratiates himself with the family, playing each of them like a fiddle, while we gradually realize that he's an extremely dangerous sociopath. The elements are there, especially if they were properly used to examine whether David is an inherently terrible person, or damaged by his experiences in the war. Instead, however, he turns out to be the result of a government experiment to create super-soldiers, who killed the researchers and escaped. This plot line is just silly. As with The Hitcher his intended victims are more effective in combating him than the people trained to deal with someone like him (in that film the police, in this the military).

One thing I have to draw particular attention is Leland Orser as Spencer Peterson, the patriarch of the family. He's performance is just laughable. He seems to be going for a version of Ned Flanders that lost God and found alcohol. His alcoholism is telegraphed from a mile away, but never commented upon directly, and plays no part in the story. Most of the other actors do what they can with what they're given, but he just seems to be living in another movie.

Out of this entire film there was exactly one scene that actually left me truly entertained, and that was pure comedy. After the family son Luke (Brendan Meyer) punches a classmate in the face for calling him a “faggot,” David is brought in with mother Laura (Sheila Kelley) to talk to the principle. David promptly explains to the principle that being called a “faggot” makes Luke the victim of a Hate Crime, and that the Peterson family will be suing the school for allowing such harassment against their son. The scene begins with the Principal stating the school has no choice but to expel Luke, and ends with the Principal begging David to accept a month of after school detention.

Yet another strike against the movie: A major subplot is David's obsession with Anna (Maika Monroe), the Peterson daughter. The truth is, these two actors are both good, but they have no chemistry. It seems incredibly strange to complain that a would-be sexual predator has no chemistry with his intended victim, but in this movie it's true. For most of the film I forgot that David cared about Anna in any way, except when the film was telegraphing it.

We're told in the final act that David has “neurological conditioning” to kill anyone who becomes aware of the experiment that created him. This twist is both nonsensical, and counterproductive to the story. Firstly, the people David initially kills under this “conditioning” know nothing about the experiment, only that he's being hunted by the military. Secondly, the entire idea removes David as a compelling villain, now he's just a puppet. It's as if the filmmakers wanted to make sure we weren't, accidentally, left with a compelling plot line.

The ultimate problem with the movie, however, is that it fails to utilize the one obvious shock it has: Over the course of the movie it's established that there was a “David Collins” resembling the one we're shown in Caleb's unit, but we also find out that this “David” has undergone plastic surgery and is not the real “David Collins.” The obvious twist is that the man is actually Caleb, returned to torment his own family, and sexually assault his own sister. Sadly, the movie is too stupid to do the obvious, which would have at least given us something.

I'm quite disappointed that this is what Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett created as their follow up to You're Next. It's as if they decided to suck all the self-awareness of You're Next out of the film, and leave us only with the un-ironic cliches of 80s films, up to and including the villain dying while giving a big thumbs-up to the heroes, and then turning up alive in the final shot of the film just in case there's money available for a sequel.

Are there worse films? Certainly. There are films for which I feel contempt. For this film I feel only indifference. Perhaps I feel a slight annoyance that I stayed up late on a night when I had to work the next day to get my second viewing of the film in. But that's all I feel. Nothing more, nothing less.

Wednesday Review: Blair Witch

As one of the few people who actually likes Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, I feel validated by how godawful the “real” sequel to The Blair Witch Project turned out. The original film was probably the single most complete piece of cinema I have ever seen. There was nothing further that we could be shown that wouldn’t simply spoil the mystery. So, Book of Shadows chose to simply go in the direction of mind-screw and present us with a meta story examining the original film as a phenomena.

But now, many years later, we finally have a true sequel. And make no mistake, this is a sequel. Everything in the original film has been turned up to eleven, as suddenly the Witch goes from a mysterious threat that might be supernatural, to a nearly god-like force of nature. The threat she poses goes from scary to cartoonish over the course of the film.

I’m not the first to note that the attempts to update the film go nowhere. The character’s bring a drone gets stuck in a tree and their cell phones stop working immediately. All the new technology is just there to say “ha ha, the Blair Witch still wins!” And that is only the beginning of the increasingly absurd list of powers the Blair Witch now seems to possess. I won’t spoil her full abilities, but suffice it to say that by the end of the movie she’s a full-on reality warper.

The marketing campaign has already made sure everyone is aware that this movie is about the brother of Heather from the first film searching for her many years later in response to some mysterious footage popping up on Youtube. It’s a silly premise, and it’s made sillier by the apparent revelation that no one had been that far into the Burkittsville woods in years. At minimum Blair Witch 2 acknowledged that once the story of the Blair Witch got out, the woods teamed with tourists.

I think I’ve decided that Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett work best with horror-comedies. You’re Next was brilliant, both tense and hilarious. Their segment in The ABCs of Death was side-splitting. But, for me at least, The Guest failed for exactly the same reason as this film: an overpowered villain who fails to be either scary or compelling.

My ultimate problem with this film, however, is a pretty major spoiler: we’re shown the Blair Witch. The camera is pointed directly at her multiple times, and we get brief but clear views of her. Congratulations to Wingard and Barrett! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horror icon ruined quite so quickly as the Blair Witch who has now transformed into a knock-off of Mama.

So, for God’s sakes skip it. I’ve suffered for you, there’s no need to sacrifice yourself to this piece of crap as well.