Make Him Feel At Home

I may have been a little hard on the hip boy team that is Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett. Though I mostly enjoyed their big debut, A Horrible Way to Die, I've fallen quite hard off their train following their lazy, nauseating, misogynist, and generally misanthropic contributions to the new "bad boy" boom of anthology horror that puked on my eyes with V/H/S and its sequel. I had put off seeing their much-loved You're Next for quite a while, but finally gave in and found it, well, pretty darn delightful.

Hence did I un-side my eye to give The Guest a shot, especially since it was conveniently streaming on Netflix Instant. Unpack your things and let's get to know one another, shall we?

Quick Plot: The Petersons are a family in mourning, having recently lost their eldest son Caleb overseas during a military mission. Their days get a little brighter with the arrival of the charming and handsome David, Caleb's army buddy who comes bearing kind words to alcoholic dad Spencer, sad mom Laura, moody 20 year old Anna, and the bullied teenage Luke.

It doesn't take long for the whole Peterson clan to start treating David like family. It certainly helps when David helps Luke brutally teach some teasing classmates a few lessons in etiquette and charms Anna's best friend by protecting her from an ex-boyfriend. Soon Spencer's receiving a promotion courtesy of the mysterious death of his supervisor and Laura seems ready to adopt David as her own.

Naturally, something is amiss. Played almost like a kinetic twist on The Monkey's Paw, The Guest continues to show some of director Adam Wingard's key strengths. Like You're Next, this film starts with such an interesting and completely believable family dynamic so that by the time chaos is reigning, we're fully invested with seeing how it will play out. It also helps that Wingard has assembled a strong genre-friendly cast (including It Follows Maika Monroe and Se7en's Leland Orser). In the center of it all is Dan Stevens, who finds the perfect balance of charm and menace to make the titular houseguest into someone worth following and fearing. 

This isn't a masterpiece or game-changing piece of genre cinema, but it's FUN. Wingard and screenwriter Barrett bring us in and rather quickly, put everything in fifth gear. Savvy viewers may find some American military politics to mine, but at its heart, this is a movie made to entertain, amuse, and scare. On all of those levels, it works. 

High Points

You have to admire the quick pace of this film. Wingard starts the mayhem under a sunny outdoors excursion, and it just keeps moving from there. There's ALMOST no wasted time whatsoever

Low Points

A lot has been written about the cuts and additions made to The Guest after some test screenings. Based on this first viewing of the theatrical cut, a lot make sense (eliminating scenes explaining David's backstory was a good move, as we can figure enough of it out without dragging the film down in exposition) but one that feels unfortunate, if the internet is to be believed, is that originally, Lance Reddick's character was a sudden introduction at the house siege as opposed to his added scenes in the military base. The idea of him just showing up with a SWAT team behind him just seems like it would have been a much more surprising and effective twist.

Lessons Learned

A spicy beverage makes for a handy weapon

Nothing insults a teenage bully more effectively than a free cosmopolitan in a dive bar

When in doubt, cry hate crime

Rent/Bury/Buy

Like You're Next, The Guest is just a fun, fast-paced horror/thriller. It doesn't quite have the same humorous charm, but it's highly entertaining and is well worth your time on Instant Watch.

A Horrible Way To Open Your Film Up To Easy Title Jokes

For whatever psychological reason you want to apply, many of us are endlessly fascinated by serial killers. Adam Wingard’s 2011 A Horrible Way To Die is quite aware of that fact, using the concept to explore several themes. None are cute and fuzzy.

Quick Plot: On a windy winter day, a man drives a tied-up woman to a secluded mountain overlook to apologetically strangle her to death.

Puppies!

Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood here…

Next we meet Sarah, a fragile thirtysomething dental hygienist celebrating three months sobriety at an AA meeting. There she meets Kevin, a fellow recovering alcoholic with a compassionate face. The two begin a hesitant relationship as we learn the root of Sarah’s life-changing decision: the opening killer is her ex, currently serving multiple life sentences for a mass killing spree that had rocked the media a few months earlier.

One of the most interesting aspects of A Horrible Way to Die is how it plays with its timeline, calmly moving between Garrick (genre champ A.J. Bowen)’s past killings, his current escape and the carnage it causes, and Sarah’s drunken past through fragile sober present. Much like the brilliant Dream Home, this structure works well in making the film interesting without unnecessarily toying with the narrative. The choice enhances the characters’ actions rather than ever feeling like a gimmick to use an unusual format.

Unfortunately, the filming style DOES feel like a gimmick. Over the last few years of independent filmmaking, we’ve seen our share of shaky cam and while it has its place, its use in A Horrible Way To Die is positively annoying. Yes, the film is going for a form of hardened realism, but that doesn’t mean the audience is required to leave with a headache.

But if you can get past some of the film’s styling issues, the story inside (by Dead Birds writer Simon Barrett)  is quite good in an unexpected way. As Sarah, Amy Seimetz creates an effective shell of a broken woman with a believable and understated performance that provides a solid center. While I’ve never dated a serial killer (that I know of), I think anyone can wonder what it mean to discover someone so close to you has been doing such terrible things. What does it say about you if you didn’t realize?

That’s one of the major questions asked by A Horrible Way To Die. Along the way (to die), we also get to think an awful lot about addiction (be it to Jack Daniels or throat slitting), relationship transitions, and America’s sick fascination with criminal minds. We don’t get answers, but it’s an interesting exercise for viewers looking for a little more challenge in their genre fare.

High Points

Between Seimetz’ distraught Sarah, Bowen’s conflicted killer and Joe Swanberg as the nice guy Kevin, all the performances are top notch in a way that shuns showiness for a harder sense of honesty.

I won’t give away the big twist, but I will give the film credit for its execution. I didn’t see it coming, but I imagine a rewatch would show the signs were there without ever impeding on the initial narrative

Low Points

I won’t lie: the title “A Horrible Way To Die” sets a definitive exploitation expectation that doesn’t in any way fit the film (though yes, it is catchy and makes jerks like me want to rent it). While I think one could assign an interesting interpreations of how the phrase refers to the film, it also seems like a cheap trick to mislead its audience

The aforementioned filming style, something that makes the film feel far more pretentious than it actually is

Lessons Learned

Going to a wine-laden Italian restaurant on your first date with a recently recovering alcoholic is probably ill-advised

When your life has already been something of a horror movie in the past, the last thing you need is a snowy trip to a cabin in the woods

It’s really hard to hurt someone in prison

Rent/Bury/Buy

A Horrible Way To Die calls to mind something like Red White & Blue, a similarly sad look at broken people made with a sprinkle of cinematic pretension. I was a huge fan of that Simon Rumley film, although it certainly sank in deeper with time. I imagine A Horrible Way To Die will have a similar fate. The more I think about Sarah and what it means to have loved a man capable of pure evil, the more intrigued I become with the film I’ve already watched. It has its problems—drink an O’Doules every time I mention shaky cam—but there’s something there in Simon Barrett’s script and Wingard’s direction. To go into the themes might reveal some plot twists and in truth, I haven’t fully decided what they’re trying to say anyway. But that’s part of the enjoyment of a film like this or Red White & Blue. It’s something to think about, a sort of film that gives birth to more questions than answers. I won’t say I liked it or didn’t, but those seeking a challenging spin on the genre could certainly get something out of a rental. That ‘something’ may be a headache or conversation, but hey, it’s something you didn’t have before watching, right?