‘The Guest’ is a Horror Masterpiece About the Toll of America’s “Forever War”

The more I think about Adam Wingard’s 2014 film The Guest, the more I’m certain that it deserves a place alongside Get Out as one of the great horror masterpieces of the last decade. Unlike Jordan Peele’s unvarnished look at the cancer of racism in America, though, The Guest toys with the psychological toll of America’s so-called “Forever War.” Pulling no punches, it drags viewers down into an abyss threatening how war might change soldiers, their families, and most especially, America.

From its opening shot of Dan Stevens‘s David running down a road in military fatigues to the multiple shots returning to absent son Caleb’s triangularly-folded memorial flag, The Guest is obsessed with the anxiety plaguing everyday American families over their sons’ and daughters’ involvement in a conflict overseas. The Guest goes even further though, and offers up the nightmare scenario that the American military has not only potentially harmed its soldiers, but also transformed them into cold-blooded monsters. It’s these fears, unspoken and taboo, that propel The Guest into greatness.

The Guest opens with a pretty straight-forward setup: a grieving military family is surprised by the sudden appearance of a charming soldier who claims to have been wartime buddies with their beloved lost son. From the moment that matriarch Laura Peterson (Sheila Kelley) opens her door for David (Dan Stevens), you know that she can’t help but fall for the lure. David’s kind, affable manner, the way he politely calls Laura, “Ma’am,” and his revelation that he was there for son Caleb’s dying moments…it’s a bullseye for him. David comes across as a cliché of military brotherhood, but a compelling one. Laura soon insists that David should stay with the family in their modest home, much to the irritation of her eldest surviving child, Anna (Maika Monroe).

Early on in the film, Anna describes David as a “walking, breathing reminder” of her dead brother. He’s more than that, though. He’s a walking, breathing reminder of a war overseas that claims American lives and leaves way too many survivors with PTSD. We never flashback to David or Caleb’s time fighting for the military and that’s important. The horror of The Guest is not what happens during combat overseas, but what gets brought home afterwards. This means grief, anguish, and most of all, an anxiety about the ethics of the conflicts the United States has been embroiled in since 9/11.

For the film’s first forty minutes, David comes across as a mysterious, if not benign, presence. He retaliates against Caleb’s little brother Luke’s (Brendan Meyer) bullies, listens to Dad (Leland Orser) complain about work over beers, and gives Laura a final thread of connection to the memory of her firstborn son. He even wins over Anna for a small while (with an instantly iconic post-shower scene). It bears noting that while the family stoically mourns Caleb with a patriotic living room shrine, Laura scurries away to the laundry room to sob out of sight. David has invited himself into the home of a picture perfect military family, right down to their intact nuclear family structure and seemingly disparate home decor, which is a mix of Native American art and Halloween season kitsch. The Guest only takes pains to paint the Petersons as “all-American” just so what comes next seems all the more shocking.

After Anna overhears David explaining on a burner phone that he is “off the grid,” she calls the military base her brother was stationed at and asks for more information on David. Inadvertently, she sets off a chain of events that reveal that David, along with her brother Caleb, were part of a military-industrial experiment conducted by the shadowy KPG Corporation. Soon the military and KPG descend upon the town to hunt down David, who in turn reveals himself to be an unhinged killer. He murders Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, attempts to blow up Anna at the diner where she works, and sets his sights on killing both of Caleb’s siblings at a Halloween dance.

David’s enhanced abilities aren’t explained much past the vague “government program” line and that only makes the film resonate more. Indeed, the mystery about what the military and KPG did to transform David so only speaks to the way those of us living on the home front can never comprehend the horrors of war that loved ones may experience. This ignorance only fans the fears in our imagination.

The Guest revels in the tropes of genre. Starting as a slow, grounded thriller and then erupting into a hyper-stylized horror film, The Guest uses our own preconceptions about these genres to inform how to feel about David and his actions. Of course we would be anxious letting even the most polite stranger into our homes, but we know for sure that a madmen hurling grenades into a diner like bocce balls must be stopped. But by the end of The Guest, we aren’t left with closure as much as we are haunted by questions: was David really the bad guy and was he defeated after all? (He gives Luke a thumbs up before “dying” but later his corpse is gone.)

The Guest toys with its audience and that’s why it’s good. It forces viewers to bring their own baggage to the table so that your final opinion of who was right, wrong, innocent, or guilty might largely depend on how you perceive the situation. Is David a typical heartless slasher villain — which is how he acts for most of Act III — or is he the victim of a corporate co-opted military using soldiers as guinea pigs? The Guest leaves this as open ended as answers about David’s ultimate fate, meaning it’s up to you.

From the fear that the kind stranger you let in might be a killer to its soundtrack’s thrumming techno beats, The Guest is a movie that revels in anxiety. Specifically, it’s focused on the emotional fallout that the last two decades of overseas combat have had on the families left at home. What The Guest sees when it examines these surviving military families is grief, numbness, bitterness, rage, and above all fear.

Where to stream The Guest