Forget the familiar Halloween rewatch for a night and make room for The Guest, Adam Wingard’s stylish 2014 action-horror thriller. It is a sharp, violent and surprisingly funny film built around Dan Stevens at his most charmingly dangerous.
Wingard later returned to government-made super-soldier territory with Onslaught, a blood-soaked thriller that shares a loose shared universe with The Guest. The newer film does not require prior knowledge, and the connection is deliberately slight: Stevens plays very different characters in each story, while The Guest’s David Collins is nowhere to be found in Onslaught.
Onslaught was available on video-on-demand as of the week covered by the source material, but The Guest remains the more approachable starting point. It is a compact suburban nightmare that gradually reveals the lethal secret behind its apparently perfect house guest.
A soldier arrives with a good story
Stevens plays David Collins, a US soldier who returns from Afghanistan carrying a message of kindness. His friend Caleb Peterson has died in combat, so David visits Caleb’s grieving family and offers to lend a hand. His manners are impeccable, his smile is disarming and his explanation sounds sincere.
David soon becomes part of the Peterson household, although his idea of helping is increasingly alarming:
- He teaches Caleb’s younger brother Luke, played by Brendan Meyer, how to stand up to bullies and gives him a butterfly knife.
- He spends time with Caleb’s sister Anna, played by Maika Monroe, sleeps with her best friend and makes arrangements to buy a gun from a local stoner.
- He kills Caleb’s father’s boss, apparently to help Caleb’s father secure a promotion.
Stevens makes David so likeable that the character’s behaviour can seem almost reasonable for a while. The performance encourages viewers to enjoy his confidence and competence even as the warning signs pile up. That balance is what makes the eventual explanation land so effectively.
Spoilers follow. David is not the soldier he claims to be. He is an unstable, exceptionally capable super-soldier created through a secret government experiment. Once his identity is threatened, a defensive mechanism takes over and he begins eliminating everyone who could expose him, including the Peterson family and their friends.
When military forces arrive under the command of Lance Reddick, David responds with further carnage. He dispatches the soldiers and the Peterson parents in a polished burst of action that recalls the ruthless efficiency of John Wick. Luke and Anna flee to their high school, where they find a way to fight back and defeat him.
David ultimately escapes, suggesting a sequel that never materialised. The relationship with Onslaught should not be overstated: both films involve government-created super-soldiers, but Stevens plays a Nazi scientist in the later movie, and the two stories do not directly continue one another.
When suburbia stops feeling safe
In an interview with The Moveable Fest, screenwriter Simon Barrett described the film’s central idea as an attempt to explode the American nuclear family. His approach was to place a disruptive stranger inside an established family dynamic, drawing on the classic “stranger comes to town” structure associated with High Plains Drifter.
Wingard’s direction makes that disruption especially vivid. Much of The Guest uses bright colours and the sunlit New Mexico landscape to create an exaggerated image of suburban comfort. The Peterson home and its neighbourhood look so pleasant that the perfection becomes unsettling rather than reassuring.
The film’s darker side is visible before the final eruption. Parties and other encounters expose the tension beneath the tidy surface, while David’s presence gradually turns ordinary domestic spaces into places of danger. The setting is not innocent so much as carefully presented as innocent.
The soundtrack reinforces that contradiction. Wingard has cited 1990s films such as Mortal Kombat and The Matrix as influences, and the result combines goth rock with electronic music. Its pulsing, nocturnal sound gives the bright suburbia an underlying menace.
A natural companion to Onslaught
Onslaught makes the themes of The Guest broader and more explicit. Its world treats violence and scientific ambition as an unstoppable storm, with innocent civilians reduced to collateral damage in the pursuit of progress. Seen in that light, The Guest feels like an origin story for Wingard and Barrett’s filmmaking interests rather than a literal prequel.
For Australian viewers choosing a horror film for a late-night session, The Guest offers a strong alternative to the usual seasonal staples. Its mix of action, suspense, dark humour and electronic atmosphere also has the direct, high-impact rhythm of a great arcade game: the threat arrives quickly, the rules become clear, and every new encounter raises the stakes.
If that blend of cinematic action and game-room energy appeals, explore RETROCADE’s arcade blog, browse the latest arcade machines, or compare options in the arcade machine buying guide.
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