"Wingard is one of the sharper young horror directors working today"
"Dan Stevens is terrific"
"Barrett's canny script flips and swerves at unexpected moments"
Story
A mysterious soldier befriends the family of a fallen comrade and quickly makes himself an indispensible part of their lives, but the secrets he’s hiding put them all in danger in The Guest, a nail-biting, retro-stylish thriller from director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett (You’re Next, A Horrible Way to Die).
Arriving unannounced on the doorstep of the Peterson family, recently discharged soldier David (Dan Stevens) brings a final message of love from their recently deceased son, Caleb, with whom he served. Still grieving over Caleb’s tragic death in combat, the Petersons welcome David into their home and their lives. Humble, helpful and unfailingly polite, David turns out to be the perfect guest, filling the void left by Caleb. He consoles Caleb’s mom (Sheila Kelley), helps dad Spencer (Leland Orser) get ahead at work, teaches teenager Luke (Brendan Meyer) how to defend himself against bullies and rids rebellious daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) of her loser boyfriend. But David’s unorthodox problem-solving methods begin to raise Anna’s suspicions as a wave of shocking and unexplained violence spreads through their small town. When her inquiries into his past raise a red flag with a super-secret private military organization, it sets the stage for a deadly final conflict.
Directed by Adam Wingard (You’re Next, A Horrible Way to Die) from a script by Simon Barrett (You’re Next, A Horrible Way to Die), The Guest deftly blends the finely tuned tension of a psychological thriller and over-the-top visceral excitement of an action drama with the sly humor of a subtle satire and the pulse-pounding suspense of a classic horror film.
DAN STEVENS stars in the action thriller THE GUEST.
(L-R) BRENDAN MEYER and MAIKA MONROE star in the action thriller THE GUEST.
DAN STEVENS stars in the action thriller THE GUEST.
DAN STEVENS stars in the action thriller THE GUEST.
MAIKA MONROE stars in the action thriller THE GUEST.
DAN STEVENS stars in the action thriller THE GUEST.
DAN STEVENS stars in THE GUEST.
DAN STEVENS stars in THE GUEST.
DAN STEVENS stars in THE GUEST.
(L-R) Director ADAM WINGARD and Screenwriter SIMON BARRETT on the set of the action thriller THE GUEST.
Official Trailer
Teaser Trailer
Clip - Bar Fight
Clip - David Walks Out of Bathroom
Clip - The Military Arrives
TV Spot - Visitor
TV Spot - Family Review
TV Spot - Hero
Clip - Haunted by Your Soul
Clip - Caleb's Room
Dan Stevens
DAN STEVENS (David) recently finished production on Night at the Museum 3, the highly-anticipated new installment of the beloved franchise, directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ben Stiller, set for a Christmas 2014 release by Fox. Next up Stevens co-stars in the thriller A Walk Among the Tombstones, directed by Scott Frank and starring Liam Neeson, to be released by Universal on September 19.
Stevens will also appear in The Cobbler, directed by Thomas McCarthy and starring Adam Sandler for a 2015 release. He recently wrapped production on Criminal Activities with Michael Pitt, directed by Jackie Earle Haley, and is currently in production on the indie film The Ticket, produced by Oren Moverman. Previously, Stevens starred in The Fifth Estate, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and directed by Bill Condon for Dreamworks; Summer In February, directed by Chris Menaul; Vamps, directed by Amy Heckerling and German-language feature Hilde, directed by Kai Wessel.
On television, Stevens starred in the Golden Globe winning program Downton Abbey. In addition, he was also in Sense & Sensibility (BBC), The Line Of Beauty (BBC), Frankenstein (Hallmark), as well as roles in the TV movies Maxwell (BBC) and Dracula (Granada/BBC).
Stevens’ theater credits include The Heiress, directed by Moises Kaufman on Broadway; Arcadia in the West End, directed by David Leveaux; Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, directed by Felix Barrett and Tom Morris at The National Theatre in London; The Vortex at The Apollo and Hay Fever at The Haymarket, both directed by Peter Hall.
In 2012 Stevens served on the Judging Panel for the Man Booker Prize. In addition, he has contributed a regular column to The Sunday Telegraph and is the Editor-at-Large for online literary quarterly The Junket. He currently resides in New York.
Maika Monroe
MAIKA MONROE (Anna Peterson) has, at just 21 years old, already demonstrated her many talents on the international level. Monroe exploded onto the scene in At Any Price, starring opposite Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid. The film debuted to rave reviews at the Venice, Toronto and Telluride film festivals and was released nationwide in April 2013. She also starred opposite Emma Watson and Kirsten Dunst in The Bling Ring, directed by Sofia Coppola. Based on true events, the film chronicles a group of fame-obsessed teenagers who use the Internet to track celebrities’ whereabouts in order to rob their homes.
Previously, Monroe was seen in Labor Day, directed by Jason Reitman and co-starring Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet. Her film It Follows debuted to rave reviews at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. She most recently wrapped the independent feature Bokeh, opposite Matt O’Leary, and is in pre-production on The Fifth Wave.
In addition to her blossoming acting career, Monroe is also one of the top-ranked female kite boarders in the world. She has competed on an international level since 2009 and recently took second place at the 2012 Red Bull International Big Air Style competition. While acting takes up most of her time these days, she strives to keep one foot in Hollywood and one in the sand.
Brendan Meyer
BRENDAN MEYER (Luke Peterson) Nineteen-year-old Brendan Meyer is already an accomplished actor. After putting several years of training under his belt, he has been working steadily in the entertainment business for the last seven years. His impeccable comedic timing, paired with his love and talent for dramatic roles, position him to become an undeniable force in the film and television industry in the years to come.
Recently, Meyer was in Vancouver filming the second installment in the “Garage Sale Mystery” series for Hallmark, opposite Lori Loughlin and guest starring in the new Fox series “Backstrom,” opposite Rainn Wilson. Meyer has been busy this year, playing Mark Powell in CBS’ “CSI: The Fallen,” Myles in CW’s “The 100,” and Colton in the Fox/WB Comedy Pilot “No Place Like Home” from Ricky Blitt and Johnny Galecki (“Big Bang Theory”), opposite Jane Kazmarek (“Malcolm in the Middle”), Jon Heder (“Napoleon Dynamite”), and David James Elliott (“JAG”).
Meyer has filmed all over North America: in Los Angeles, New Mexico, Toronto and Vancouver, as well as his home town of Edmonton. After wrapping his highly successful 80-episode run in the titular role of the YTV/Disney XD hit series “Mr. Young” last year, Meyer has been working non-stop. His many TV credits include, Hallmark’s “Cedar Cove,” Teen Nick/YTV’s “Life With Boys,” every season of The Hub’s “The Haunting Hour,” “Dinosapien” and, of course, his lead role as Henry in the Disney Channel Original Movie “Girl VS Monster” opposite Olivia Holt. He also played lead roles in Hallmark’s “Garage Sale Mystery” and “The Christmas Ornament.” Last year, he appeared in Starving in Suburbia and The Virginian. Other recent film credits include Leap for your Life, Spooky Buddies, Christmas in Canaan, and Tooth Fairy. His directorial debut, A Job, premiered at the Montreal World film festival in 2014.
Meyer has completed three seasons with the Freewill Shakespeare Festival in Edmonton. His past theatre credits include “Macbeth,” “Much Ado about Nothing,” “Titus Andronicus,” “Comedy of Errors,” “Richard III” (Freewill Players) and “Beneath the Ice” (Fringe Theatre Adventures). He also has numerous directing credits (“Fourteen,” “The Tempest”) and acting credits (“The Haunting of Hathaway House,” “The Tempest,” “Twelfth Night” and “An Unnatural Turn”) with Celsius Youth Theatre, where he is the co-founder and former co-artistic director.
Meyer is a self-professed Shakespeare nerd, who writes his own Shakespeare adaptations and screenplays in his free time. He is also committed to giving back: he has strong ties with Vancouver based Project Limelight, an inner city youth theatre program, and One! International, an organization running schools for disadvantaged youth in India.
Meyer currently lives in Los Angeles but often returns to Vancouver for filming.
Chase Williamson
CHASE WILLIAMSON (Zeke) stars on the television series “Complete Works” and “Video Game High School.” He will next be seen in the feature films Fetish Factory and The Hollywood Reboot. Previously, Williamson appeared in the TV series “All the Wrong Notes” and “Never Fade Away.”
A graduate of the USC theater program, Williamson scored in his first major film audition by landing a leading role in Don Coscarelli’s John Dies at the End. He stars opposite Paul Giamatti, Rob Mayes and Clancy Brown. The film premiered at Sundance in 2012 and earned stellar reviews.
Williamson previously starred in Sparks (2013), playing the titular superhero in a film noir, live-action translation of the comic-book series.
Williamson has an extensive theater background. He has performed in shows such as “The Wild Party,” “The Beggar’s Opera,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Angels in America” and “The Last Five Years.”
Leland Orser
LELAND ORSER (Spencer Peterson) first came to prominence in David Fincher’s Se7en, with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. He has gone on to give memorable performances in one great film after another, including Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection, opposite Sigourney Weaver; Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, with Tom Hanks; Philip Noyce’s The Bone Collector, alongside Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie; Peter Berg’s Very Bad Things, opposite Jon Favreau, Jeremy Piven and Cameron Diaz; Philip Kaufman’s Twisted, with Ashley Judd and Samuel L. Jackson; Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German, opposite George Clooney and Cate Blanchett; and Pierre Morel/Olivier Megaton’s Taken and Taken 2, alongside Liam Neeson.
Orser is currently filming Rupert Wyatt’s The Gambler, opposite Mark Wahlberg. He can soon be seen in Riley Stearns’ dark comedy Faults, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival.
Other film credits include Runaway Jury, alongside John Cusack and Rachel Weisz; Pearl Harbor, with Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale; Escape from L.A., opposite Kurt Russell; Excess Baggage, with Alicia Silverstone and Christopher Walken; Resurrection, opposite Christopher Lambert; Daredevil, alongside Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner; and Confidence, with Ed Burns and Rachel Weisz.
On television, Orser most recently appeared in “Magic City,” “Revolution,” “Touch” and “Scandal.” He played Dr. Lucien Dubenko for the final five years of NBC’s “ER” and was regularly seen on Fox’s “24.”
Orser wrote and directed the feature film Morning, which was released by Anchor Bay in theaters last fall. He stars in the film alongside Jeanne Tripplehorn, Laura Linney, Kyle Chandler and Elliott Gould. Morning is now available on iTunes.
Sheila Kelley
SHEILA KELLEY (Laura Peterson) co-starred alongside Nicolas Cage in Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men, George Clooney in One Fine Day and Aaron Eckhart in Neil LaBute’s Nurse Betty. Her other film credits include Cameron Crowe’s Singles, John Sayles’ Passion Fish and Michael Radford’s Dancing at the Blue Iguana, which Kelley also produced.
Inspired by her role as an exotic dancer in the Radford film, Kelley founded The S Factor, a wildly popular fitness program centered on pole dancing that has been featured on Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres’ shows as well as The View.
Lance Reddick
LANCE REDDICK (Major Carver) came to prominence in the memorable role of Lt. Cedric Daniels on HBO’s critically acclaimed series “The Wire.” The series, which brought him a global fan base, is widely considered one of the best television shows in history and helped spark the current “binge watching” trend in its afterlife.
Earlier this year, Reddick had recurring roles on FX’s “American Horror Story: Coven,” opposite Jessica Lange and Angela Bassett; NBC’s “The Blacklist,” opposite James Spader; and CBS’ “Intelligence.” He is currently shooting a lead in upcoming Amazon Original Series, “Bosch.” Based on the best-selling book series by Michael Connelly, “Bosch” premieres in 2015.
Later this fall, Reddick will appear in a leading role in the comedy feature Search Party, opposite T. J. Miller, Adam Pally and Thomas Middleditch, directed by Scot Armstrong. He will also appear in the 2015 release of Snoot Films’ Faults.
Reddick was previously seen in White House Down, with Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx and Maggie Gyllenhaal. He also worked with Gyllenhaal in Won’t Back Down, along with two-time Academy Award nominee Viola Davis. Reddick had a pivotal cameo in Spike Lee’s remake of the Korean cult thriller Old Boy, reuniting him with his Jonah Hex co-star Josh Brolin.
Other film credits include the Lee Daniels-produced drama Tennessee, opposite Mariah Carey; I Dreamed of Africa, opposite Daniel Craig and Kim Basinger; The Siege, for director Ed Zwick; and the offbeat indie crime drama Bad City.
Reddick considers the role of detective John Basil (aka Mobay) on HBO’s “Oz” to be his breakout role. He also did outstanding work on the award-winning HBO series “The Corner” and ABC’s “Lost.”
Although audiences have come to know him as the stern and authoritarian Special Agent Phillip Broyles on the hit Fox series “Fringe,” Reddick showed off his comedic chops with a very successful guest-star turn on the FX comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” He then starred in a highly successful Funny or Die viral video, “Toys R Me,” as well as a a spot for CollegeHumor.com. They were so well received that Reddick was then offered an episode of “Wilfred” on FX as well as sketches on IFC’s “Comedy Bang Bang,” Comedy Central’s “Key and Peele,” and Wanda Sykes’ “HERlarious” on OWN. He also guest starred on “NTSF: SD: SUV” for Adult Swim.
A stage actor by training, Reddick is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. One of his first roles was as Jeffrey Wright’s understudy in the Broadway production of “Angels in America.” His other theater credits include “Henry V,” “Afterplay,” “On House,” “Julius Caesar” and the critically acclaimed 2006 Off-Broadway revival of August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars,” in which he played the lead character.
Adam Wingard
ADAM WINGARD (Director and Editor) has been very busy over the last three years. His serial killer love story A Horrible Way to Die premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival in the “Vanguard” section and was acquired soon after by Starz/Anchor Bay. Wingard’s next directorial effort, You’re Next, a darkly comedic home-invasion thriller, went on to premiere to ravenous reviews at the 2011 Toronto festival as part of the “Midnight Madness” section. The film also created a feeding frenzy with buyers and was finally acquired by Lionsgate, which gave it a wide release on August 23, 2013.
Wingard directed segments in the critically acclaimed genre films V/H/S and V/H/S 2. Both anthologies were bought by Magnolia Pictures. The ABCs of Death, a 26-chapter horror anthology produced for Drafthouse Films and Magnet, had Wingard directing Q Is for Quack, a short for the letter “Q.”
The 2011 Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal honored Wingard with his very own sidebar section “Medicated Monsters: A Spotlight on Filmmaker Adam Wingard,” which focused on both his current work and early shorts.
Simon Barrett
SIMON BARRETT (Writer) has amassed such writing and producing credits as You’re Next, Dead Birds and A Horrible Way to Die, all three of which he wrote while working full-time as a licensed private investigator.
Barrett was also a segment writer and producer on the anthology horror film V/H/S and a director, writer and executive producer on V/H/S 2, both of which premiered in the Sundance Film Festival’s “Park City at Midnight” section.
Available Now on BluRay, DVD,
Digital HD and Netflix
Digital HD and Netflix
AVAILABLE December 16 on Digital HD
Available January 6 on Blu-ray + DVD
Reviews
"Tough and Fun"
"Stevens serves up a mesmerizing star turn of psycho charm"
"A dirty-sexy-funny homage to the vise-grip corkers that marked John Carpenter's and James Cameron's indie heyday"
"Stevens gives "The Guest" its killer personality"
"Stevens serves up a mesmerizing star turn of psycho charm"
"A dirty-sexy-funny homage to the vise-grip corkers that marked John Carpenter's and James Cameron's indie heyday"
"Stevens gives "The Guest" its killer personality"
“Confident, swoony, and hilarious thriller”
"The Guest delivers on everything — the sex, the humor, the menace, the cool"
"The Guest delivers on everything — the sex, the humor, the menace, the cool"
“Entertaining as Hell”
“The Terminator” meets “Halloween”
"It's hellish good fun."
"A blast of wicked mirth and malice."
"A blast of wicked mirth and malice."
"Sure-footed and sleek, shrink-wrapped in a genre-aware cleverness and preapproved for cult status."
"The Guest is big, it’s bold, it’s badass, full of flavor Hollywood wishes it could pour over its vanilla blockbusters."
"A terrific performance at the heart of a witty, gruesome entertainment that hardly puts a foot wrong"
"I enjoyed it from beginning to end"
“The Guest” ought to be a sneaky surprise hit."
"I enjoyed it from beginning to end"
“The Guest” ought to be a sneaky surprise hit."
"The kind of film that begs to be seen with a large, involved audience that’s not afraid to talk back to the screen"
"A sly, entertaining tip of the hat to ’70s-era John Carpenter films"
"So much fun"
"Humorous without being a comedy, clever without being cute, and violent without being overly grisly"
"This Guest can stay as long as it likes"
4 Stars
"A sly, entertaining tip of the hat to ’70s-era John Carpenter films"
"So much fun"
"Humorous without being a comedy, clever without being cute, and violent without being overly grisly"
"This Guest can stay as long as it likes"
4 Stars
“Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens brings a quiet menace to the lead role”
"After 'You're Next,' Adam Wingard wreaks havoc on another nuclear family in this giddily violent treat for genre fans."
“The Guest” is the perfect synthesis of Cameron, Carpenter and Cannon [Films] and one of the most fun films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
“The picture effortlessly moves between a nerve-wracking mystery to a gleefully dark comedy, and at its best it even mixes the two together.”
“There is a giddy sense of invention to the movie, and it's told in this breathless way that is part of what makes it feels like such unashamed fun.”
“Think of this as THE BOURNE IDENTITY, crossed with THE TERMINATOR, with a healthy dose of HALLOWEEN thrown in for good measure. If this sounds bug nuts insane, that's only because it is- in the most awesome way possible.”
"Adam Wingard follows up his hit YOU’RE NEXT with a stylish love letter to Eighties and Nineties horror and action.”
“Stevens and Wingard having a tremendous go making it impossibly cool and calculated, yet hilarious and overwrought”
“Gloriously bombastic”
"A demented action-horror hybrid of sci-fi conspiracy thriller and gore-fest"
“David Collins is the movie’s dominant presence — and perhaps the most mesmerizing movie psycho we’ve seen in this century.”