The Guest opens with a soldier named David (Dan Stevens) arriving at a New Mexico home to deliver a message to the mother of a dead soldier named Caleb. In his final moments, Caleb asked David to tell his family that he loves them, and the family responds to David’s kindness by taking him in. At first, David is a sweet, thoughtful young man, but he quickly shows a more sadistic side, and as the parents fall for his yes-ma’am routine, their daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) becomes suspicious of David’s murderous ways.

Make no mistake, The Guest is glorious, stinky cheese. The acting is pretty bad, the effects are simultaneously gory and chintzy, and the dialogue is about as on-the-nose as it can be. But it’s not campy, self-aware cheese like, say, Hobo with a Shotgun or the Machete films. Instead, it’s an earnest little low-budget horror/thriller, and it feels refreshing to watch a movie that isn’t poking us in the ribs all the time to clue us in to how very clever it’s being...

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