The Guest  ★★★½

ADAM Wyngard is a horror fan favourite.

The American director loves the genre and, while all his films haven’t been great, there is never any doubting the passion behind them.

The best of them has been You’re Next, a twisty, siege-based offering from 2011.

Less successful was the 2016 Blair Witch which had its moments but was always going to struggle in comparison to the original.

But the retro horror-thriller The Guest from 2014 is another crowd-pleaser.

I like the film for the sheer simplicity of its characters and story-telling, driven by a specifically ’80s look and sound.

Dan Stevens was fresh from three years of television’s Downtown Abbey when he was cast against type as the mysterious stranger David who comes into a family’s lives as an apparent friend of their dead son.

David appears one day saying he served with their son in the military, which seems clear from photos, and just wants to honour his buddy’s dying wish to tell them how much he loved and appreciated them.

Still grieving mum Laura, played well by Sheila Kelley, is immediately taken with David. Dad Spencer (Leland Orser) is equally drawn to him after some initial reticence.

After David helps the younger son Luke (Brendan Myers) out of a couple of difficult personal situations he is also on-board, but daughter Anna, played by the striking Maika Monroe, remains sceptical.

Anna’s concerns grow as a series of tragic events involving people connected to the family continue to build.

Her concerns trigger an alarm at a secret para-military private organisation and an eruption of violence that engulfs the entire community.

The escalation of tension and danger is of course totally unrealistic and the character turns ridiculously over-the-top, particularly David who starts to resemble something out of a Terminator movie.

But it is also fully in keeping with the ’80s aesthetic and makes the film such an entertaining retro example of B-grade exploitative cinema.

Wyngard’s next film is a remake of the terrific Korean slasher I Saw The Devil. He and collaborating writer Simon Barrett will really need to pull out all the stops if they are to match it.

In the meantime, check out the guilty pleasure that is The Guest.