The Guest

 Before writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard completely missed the point of The Blair Witch Project and moved on to make a couple of silly american Kaiju movies, they put out a couple of pretty cool horror movies and early contributions to the V/H/S series. Out of all of them my favorite is 2014's The Guest, which sort of straddles the line between their nastier slasher films and the more over-the-top stuff that followed by way of a pastiche of gritty, mid-budget '80s genre stuff.

 As a homage, it's an unqualified success - it really feels like a relic from that time, to the point where it's a bit jarring when someone pulls out a laptop to burn a CD mixtape (which is already a time capsule in its own right; Ugh, I feel old). But the movie's neatest trick is that it wrangles all of its influences to power a really fun, knowingly silly story played (at least until the very final line) with a completely straight face.

 The Petersons - particularly mom (Sheila Kelley) and dad (Leland Orser) - are still mourning their son Caleb, lost in combat somewhere the Middle East.
 Enter David Collins (Dan Stevens), who pops up unannounced on their front door one fine summer day; David was a friend of Caleb's, and he's following up on a promise to check in on his family.

 Mom is immediately won over and invites him to stay over a few days as a houseguest. Dad takes a tiny bit more convincing, but David proves so effortlessly charming that he's soon confiding his office troubles with him over drinks.

 Luke, the troubled son (Brendan Meyer), takes to him quickly - especially after he beats up his high-school bullies in a hilarious, brutal bar brawl. That leaves Anna (Maika Monroe), the adult daughter, who tries to be wary of him for a while... and is soon making him a mixtape.

 And it makes sense; David has the larger-than-life looks and charisma of Dan Stevens. But as soon as no one's around, he switches off and stares off into the distance. It's a brilliant, funny portrayal of sociopathy, and the first time I watched had me wondering if the movie was going to go into The Terminator sci-fi territory. Not quite... but almost.

 The movie is nearly half-done before David kills some people on-screen, and the movie brilliantly keeps his motivations and plan fuzzy. It's a moot point, anyhow, as when the military find out where he is and send a team of mercenaries headed by the great, late Lance Reddick, those plans are scuppered. The movie briefly shifts gears from thriller into action territory, before settling in for a more intimate, blood-soaked finale which, OK, does pay its respects to Cameron.

 It's a brilliant mish-mash, convincing in any of the disguises it dons. The thriller aspects are suitably outrageous (love David's sage counsel to Luke), and the action is meaty and knows to show shell the casings from a light machinegun bouncing in slow motion on the dusty floor; Incidentally, I really miss when low-ish-budget stuff like this could still use explosives to depict bullet hits on a house and not CGI sparks and dust puffs.

 The cinematography (by Robby Baumgartner)is great and unshowy, and the script manages to get a few interesting locations. The acting's really good across the board, with Stevens and Monroe stealing the show.

 The film's secret weapon is the soundtrack - excellent synth-driven original music from Steve Moore, and a bunch of goth and goth-adjacent rock from the 80s, which do as good a job of positioning the movie as the plot devices and unfussy action; it's set in a version of the modern world in which young people really seem to be into Front 242, and Anna can be a fan of Clan of Ximox, Sisters of Mercy and Love and Rockets. A key scene is scored to the opening of Clan of Ximox's A Day, which is as cool a music choice as you can manage.

 Unlike most of the nostalgia-fuelled films of the last couple of decades, The Guest feels more like it could sit comfortably among its influences rather than just stare at them from a distance; I've filed it away in my mind next to The Hitcher, in all its (Roy?) batty glory. And that's really high praise, dammit!