In spite of its flaws, I loved The Guest. I loved it so much that I’ve been reluctant to watch another movie or tv show two days later and still haven’t mailed the DVD back to Netflix. I’ve rewatched parts of it and kind of want to rewatch the whole movie again. The first half is way stronger than the second.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

First, The Guest felt like an homage or response to John Carpenter’s Halloween. What if Eric Northam from True Blood was behind the Michael Myers mask? He would calculate what the human beings needed to see to get what he wants, and his solution to normal human beings’ problems would be violently out of proportion. If you saw Stoker, you’ll know what The Guest is like when no one is around-a scary dead-eyed statue staring straight ahead. The music and titles are John Carpenter-esque. Second, the soundtrack is Michael Mann’s Manhunter good-perfect accompaniment to every scene, and I want it playing 24/7. Third, it is committed to an 80s style mashup of horror and action, which is both exhilarating in ways that Tarantino takes hours to evoke and nostalgic if you ever had a Trapper Keeper. Fourth, someone described The Guest as Captain America gone wrong. No, it is a realistic Captain America and instead of S.H.I.E.L.D., we get a shadowy corporation (I actually would have preferred if The Guest never explicitly explained the titular character’s origin story or showed the shadowy corporation). He is super strong, perceptive, has insane stamina, a rapid healer, incapable of getting inebriated or high or sleeping, a strategic and ruthless fighter and something fundamentally broken inside that he just can’t hide for long. You can never experiment on a human being, especially a soldier who is trained to kill, and expect that things will go well. When he tries to encourage a teenager to stand up to bullies, it is an Afterschool Special produced by a cheerful, all-American Charles Manson, “Never let anyone pick on you. Otherwise you’ll carry it with you the rest of your life. Those kids at school, are they bigger than you? Then bring a knife to school. If they take it off you & beat you up, you go around their houses at night and burn them down with their families inside. What is the worse they can do?” For those superficial people who only like staring at hot men, go directly to 27-31 minutes into the movie for extreme hotness.