The Guest (2014)
Country: US/GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 100m
Director: Adam Wingard
Cast: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Brendan Meyer, Sheila Kelley, Leland Orser, Lance Reddick
Synopsis:
A U.S. soldier's bereaved family is visited by a returning comrade who ingratiates himself with the household. Little does the family suspect that they were both part of a covert operations experiment to produce highly skilled personnel ready to kill without compunction... until people start dying.
Review:
Universal Soldier for the Netflix generation, i.e. the domestic/smalltown settings and family dynamics are familiar from countless series going back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The violence is slow to arrive but then quickly gets silly, and the payoff is a self-reflexive WTF. The whole is best approached as an old-fashioned 50s B-movie like Invaders from Mars with undertones of Teorema (1968), though it is doubtful the writer was thinking of something so subversive; Stevens, however, in a film-stealing turn, does seem to be in on the joke.
Country: US/GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 100m
Director: Adam Wingard
Cast: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Brendan Meyer, Sheila Kelley, Leland Orser, Lance Reddick
Synopsis:
A U.S. soldier's bereaved family is visited by a returning comrade who ingratiates himself with the household. Little does the family suspect that they were both part of a covert operations experiment to produce highly skilled personnel ready to kill without compunction... until people start dying.
Review:
Universal Soldier for the Netflix generation, i.e. the domestic/smalltown settings and family dynamics are familiar from countless series going back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The violence is slow to arrive but then quickly gets silly, and the payoff is a self-reflexive WTF. The whole is best approached as an old-fashioned 50s B-movie like Invaders from Mars with undertones of Teorema (1968), though it is doubtful the writer was thinking of something so subversive; Stevens, however, in a film-stealing turn, does seem to be in on the joke.
Country: US/GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 100m
Director: Adam Wingard
Cast: Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe, Brendan Meyer, Sheila Kelley, Leland Orser, Lance Reddick
Synopsis:
A U.S. soldier's bereaved family is visited by a returning comrade who ingratiates himself with the household. Little does the family suspect that they were both part of a covert operations experiment to produce highly skilled personnel ready to kill without compunction... until people start dying.
Review:
Universal Soldier for the Netflix generation, i.e. the domestic/smalltown settings and family dynamics are familiar from countless series going back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The violence is slow to arrive but then quickly gets silly, and the payoff is a self-reflexive WTF. The whole is best approached as an old-fashioned 50s B-movie like Invaders from Mars with undertones of Teorema (1968), though it is doubtful the writer was thinking of something so subversive; Stevens, however, in a film-stealing turn, does seem to be in on the joke.