2014 - IN REVIEW: BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

 

THE GUEST

This year I'm handling the idea of biggest disappointment a little differently than I have in the past. In years gone by I have chosen a film that I had high expectations for that, for whatever reason, did not come close to meeting said expectations. However this year my biggest disappointment is given to a film I was absolutely loving (to the point that I thought it was a new modern classic) until it took a massive turn two thirds into the movie, and every thing that came after it was so bad, that it destroyed all the love I had before it. The movie in question is Adam Wingard's “The Guest”. As I said, for the first hour of the film, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. The story is about a soldier who visits the family of one his deceased comrades. He explains that he was friends with their son and was actually with him at the time of his death. The family welcome him into their home and lives with open arms but with his arrival comes a series of mysterious deaths that all seem to benefit this family. Is their house-guest somehow behind these strange murders and deaths? Is he even who he says he is? The atmosphere and palpable suspense that Adam Wingard is able to generate in these opening scenes is genius because as charming as “David” (the guest) is, we never truly trust him. The highlight of the film is the very charismatic lead performance by Dan Stevens as “David”. He is just so suave and likeable that it is easy to see why the family trust him so quickly. He is calmly spoken, always smiling, very helpful; a gentleman really – a gentleman with a secret though. It is when the secret is revealed and we learn more about “David” that the film fall on its arse as it quickly becomes all about action, guns and violence, instead of the character development and interactions that was so great and important in the first hour. The more the film goes along, the more it continually gets worse with terrible action scenes that are set at the backdrop of a high school dance. The high school must have had the biggest budget ever for their dance because the sets and props are so over the top that they defy logic. And that's the problem with the last thirty minutes of “The Guest”, it just becomes more and more implausible. There is no reality left in the film as it suddenly comes across as a teenage boy's fantasy rather than an honest conclusion to the drama that was built up over the first hour of the film. This is why the film is my biggest disappointment of 2014; it had the opportunity to be a new cult classic, but it had such a lousy final third to it, that it just destroyed whatever passion I had for it. Some films can have bad endings and it doesn't change how you feel about the majority of it, but this ending was so bad it couldn't help but destroy it to pieces.