The Guest makes for very bad company

Like the titular bad houseguest in the film, The Guest is a flick that greets the viewer with an exciting bang, shows immense promise and then makes the whole encounter awkward by drinking too much, vomiting on the shag carpet and passing out facedown on the kitchen linoleum.

In a small town in rural New Mexico, the Peterson family is left reeling from the death of their son, Caleb, who was a soldier fighting in the Middle East. David (Dan Stevens) is a veteran who takes it upon himself to arrive unannounced to deliver Caleb’s last words of love to his family. The Petersons are an ordinary and stereotypical bunch that almost seem modeled after characters in the board game Life. Caleb’s mom, Mrs. Peterson (Sheila Kelley), is one-sided for the entire film, and Mr. Peterson (Leland Orser) drinks too much and hates his boss. In other words, they have as many dimensions as a piece of paper.

Caleb’s little brother Luke (Brendan Meyer) and sister Anna (Maika Monroe) are more dynamic characters and brilliantly portrayed. Luke is bullied at school, and Anna is a goth high school senior who hates her boyfriend. David, the unexpected visitor, fits in with the family and is inexplicably invited to stay a few days. He breaks up Anna’s strange relationship and helps Luke deal with his demons at school. Meyer and Monroe, a professional kite-boarder turned actress, deliver moment after moment of hilarious exchanges that will surely keep at least half the audience from leaving the theater mid-film. But as a series of strange events begin to rock the small town the Petersons live in, even the talent of the two cannot salvage the movie from becoming a train wreck.

For whatever reason, a huge number of low-budget Sundance thrillers follow this same predictable trend: In the beginning a few talented actors manage to build a rather intriguing plot that suddenly, and without warning, comes crashing down in a burning mess of unexplained plot twists and egregiously overdone concluding scenes. The film is described on its website as blending the “finely tuned tension of a psychological thriller and over-the-top visceral excitement of an action drama with the sly humor of a subtle satire and the pulse-pounding suspense of a classic horror film.”

It blends those genres about as deftly as a one-flippered walrus blends drinks at a bar. The film was certainly thrilling, horrifying and exciting. But it was also just bad.

In a preposterous bloodbath reminiscent of the Game of Thrones Red Wedding scene (and apparently in an effort to cause the audience to forget how little sense the plot makes), everything about the movie seems to fall apart, leaving only the pain of watching it still standing. Hilariously simplistic and cheesy lines combine with quite possibly the worst “chase-through-the-high-school-prom’s-haunted-house” scene in all of cinematic history to produce a miserable experience not worth the price of admission.

But, just like how an intoxicated night is sometimes worth waking up on the kitchen floor, a certain moviegoers will appreciate the film’s excessive attempts to thrill and horrify. A particular viewership (call them the movie adrenaline junkie type) will also appreciate the film for its eclectic and cerebral selection of ’80s electronic music, which lends the film a uniquely cool and “things are not as they seem” vibe that follows the characters throughout the film. Film critic Richard Roeper urged moviegoers not to be surprised if the film becomes a “cult classic” — and he may very well be right. The modern day throwback to ’80s horror is certainly primed for a cult following from a very specific type of viewer.

Roeper was only half-right, however, when he described the movie as “completely ridiculous and entertaining as hell.”

Like a football player tackled on the two-yard line, The Guest simply falls short. Given the many questions and complex messages about family and loss that fronted in the film’s beginning, it is unsurprising that the movie fails to answer them all satisfactorily. Put simply, the film is a victim of its own success as the dynamite premise simply ends up biting off more than it can chew.

The Guest opens in select theaters on Sept. 17. Like any good guest, it should sample some appetizers, shake some hands and leave promptly.