Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett’s recent work together has generated some well-deserved buzz. You’re Next (2011) is one of the smartest and most fun home-invasion slasher movies of recent years. Their follow-up, The Guest (2014), is a deliciously fun action-thriller with a strong vein of black comedy that draws on some pillars of 80’s and 90’s genre films.
It seems almost every review of the film has foregrounded its 80s influences. In his programme write-up for the Toronto International Film Festival, Colin Geddes calls it “a slick, eighties-style action thriller without resorting to parody or pastiche.” Writing for The Dissolve, Scott Tobias makes multiple comparisons between The Guest and The Stepfather (1987), and writes that “Wingard’s direction is a robust throwback to the VHS gorefests of yore, but with a distinctly more modern slickness and snap….” David Hughes, at Empire Online, makes a similar connection when he writes, “It’s almost as if Barrett watched The Stepfather and The Terminator back to back and thought, ‘What if, instead of trying to kill Sarah Connor, the Terminator moved in with her?’ Continue reading
DVD Commentary 