I recently violated one of my cardinal rules for movie-watching. I actually looked up a movie and read the reviews before going to see it. Why you say I violated that cardinal rule? Well it's because I never even heard of this movie. I never saw any previews in the theaters for this movie, I never saw any commercials about it on television and I don't watch any late night talk shows or talk shows period in case the actors went around to promote the movie. So I just googled The Guest and read what popped up in reviews. I liked what I read. I had expectations based on what I read. I was looking forward to seeing what I read about. The movie ended. The movie met most of my expectations. Most of the reviews said that this movie had everything. Horror, syfy, action, car chases! Reviews made comparisons to other movies like Fast & the Furious, Terminator and slasher movies. I just think it fell short in one category. That's all.
The Guest is brought to you by the same people who brought you the movie "You're Next". I liked that movie. It was cool. It was suspenseful. It was a piece of good cinematic work. I was hoping that magic touch will work for "The Guest". It was ok. It wasn't great. The movie is about this guy that shows up at this family's home who are still grieving the loss of the oldest son in the military. The guy tells the mom that he was a good friend of the deceased son. She invited him in and somehow he ends up staying there for awhile, embedding himself into the family. That's when things went downhill. By the time the movie is over, everyone in the theater audience should know better than to invite a perfect stranger to stay at your home without a proper background check at least.
The one thing that this movie made me nostalgic for was for the 80's slasher flicks. The last twenty minutes or so of the movie were the bloodiest. The carnage took place at a high school dance party (just like all the other movies). Knives were involved. Lots of blood everywhere. It was corny, it was gory, it was campy, it was the 80's all over again. The action was quick, the dialogue was to the point. At least this movie gave a reasonable explanation for a common element that occurs in all the slasher flicks. I can't go into it because then it would spoil everything. Even though I liked the movie, I wasn't satisfied by it. It still fell short in one of the aforementioned categories. I am sure if I didn't read any of the reviews I would have liked the movie more. I learned my lesson and I won't do it again. In the end, I recommend that you get the dvd or the blue-ray or whatever the kids call it these days when it comes out.
In the end, I would give this movie a B+. The reason why I gave it a + is because Matthew Crawley went from this:
to this:
DAYUMMMM!!!!!! That's hot!!!! Matthew Crawley has abs!!! That is why this movie got a +. The movie gave us this hot, steamy, shirtless scene!! Yummy yumm yumm!!! I didn't even recognize him as Matthew Crawley from Downton Abbey. Looking good Matthew!!!
