Film

The Guest

Name: The Guest
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Action
Released: 2014
Cast: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Leland Orser, Sheila Kelley, Brendan Meyer

A lean, John Carpenter-flavored thriller dressed up as a domestic drama: Dan Stevens, all cheekbones and unnerving calm, arrives claiming to be a dead soldier's army buddy and slowly reveals himself as something far more dangerous. Equal parts creeping dread and pulpy 80s action, synth score doing half the work — for anyone who wants B-movie thrills delivered with real style.

TMDb rating

6.6

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Wingard and Barrett's other great trick — another home invasion movie that flips expectations, revealing hidden strength inside a seemingly ordinary family. Same nervy energy, same love of subverting the genre from the inside.

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Ryan Gosling's near-silent wheelman lives by a code and explodes into sudden brutal violence, all set to a pulsing synth score that clearly shares DNA with The Guest's. Cool, stylish, unexpectedly tender.

But Slower and more meditative — patience required for its long stretches of near-silence between bursts of violence.

It Follows2015

Another 2014 release mining retro synths and suburban unease for real dread, chasing a curse instead of a soldier but drawing on the same well of Carpenter atmosphere and lurking menace.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Night of the Hunter1955

The Guest's entire engine — a magnetic stranger who talks his way into a grieving family's trust while hiding lethal intent — was essentially built here, six decades before Dan Stevens put on combat boots.

Robert Mitchum's preacher, LOVE and HATE tattooed across his knuckles, is one of cinema's great seductive monsters — charming his way into a vulnerable family while hunting for something buried. Gothic, dreamlike, unforgettable.

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A scruffy, near-wordless revenge thriller trading charisma for grim competence, following an ordinary man who becomes unexpectedly good at violence. Stripped down where The Guest is sleek.

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Small-town Texas, a shocking death, and a conspiracy that runs further up the chain than anyone expects, wrapped in the same nostalgic 80s trappings — mustaches, synths, escalating violence.

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But Blunter and more B-movie in execution, with far less interest in character than concept.

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The template for an unstoppable, disguised human weapon who infiltrates ordinary lives with a hidden mission — Schwarzenegger's cyborg is David's spiritual ancestor, decades before synth-pop nostalgia made it retro again.

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Same mythology, played with a completely straight face: soldiers weaponised by a classified program into near-indestructible killing machines, minus the moody atmosphere and dry wit.

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