This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.
Whether you consider it an homage to 1980s thrillers, or a throwback to action films of the 1990s, it is clear that The Guest has much more meat in it than your typical fast-moving fun flick. Watching the film unfold before you—with both literal and metaphorical guns blazing—it feels intentionally crafted to simultaneously occupy the same space as action films and to also coyly toy with the audience’s expectations of those films. One of the ways that The Guest intentionally subverts audience expectations is its assumption of the female gaze.
Pinning down what makes the camera use a female gaze can be a little tricky, as we have all lived within the male gaze for so long. It is commonplace to see women on display disproportionately while male characters go fully clothed. The gaze’s assumption of heterosexuality also carries over to the infrequently used female gaze, making it slightly more visible. It is this consumption of the male body in The Guest which initially establishes the film’s gaze as female.
Dan Stevens plays the main character, David. Stevens was most well-known to audiences as the romantic and strong cousin Matthew in Downtown Abbey. Matthew made many women in the television show swoon with his soft blond hair and blue eyes. Stevens’s role in the program was decidedly British. From the accent to the tuxedos to living in an honest castle there was a level of exoticness to him. His casting in The Guest adds a level of this “otherness” to a firmly American character.
David is a good old boy. Returning home from Afghanistan he first visits the family of a fallen soldier to pay his respects and carry out the dying man’s wishes. While staying with the Peterson family David quickly establishes himself as their protector, whether they want the help or not. The daughter, Anna (Maika Monroe) seems uncertain at first, but one thing wins her over to David’s good graces: his body.
A quick encounter in the hallway before heading out to a friend’s birthday party put Anna face to pecs with David’s patriotic and glistening muscles. He was just getting out of the shower before dressing for the party, though his timing seems more intentional than fortuitous. David’s towel is slung low, below his hips, and the hot shower has left his body shining in the hallway lights. Anna stutters and can barely get a few words out before recoiling to her bedroom.
With David in his towel the camera’s gaze is firmly female. Not only does it linger across his body, slicing him up into distinct regions of rippling muscle rather than showing him as a whole person, but the entire experience is filmed with sympathy to Anna’s experience. It is in Anna’s reaction we see to the hunk in the hallway. The editing and music in this scene are clearly geared toward aligning with Anna’s pleasure in the sight. She is delighting in seeing this beautiful man in her own home. Though she is slightly embarrassed by her inability to concentrate when faced with such a specimen, she is not ashamed by her desire. Anna’s sexual longing for David’s ripped abs, paired with the audience’s similar want, is presented as a certainty.
This is the most striking visual representation of the female gaze in The Guest, but there are elements in the story that also align the audience with the female characters, rather than the male characters.
When we first meet David he is running. Running down an empty road, toward the Peterson’s house. The mother, Laura (Sheila Kelley), is the only one home to meet him for the first time. As David is an outsider coming in to their town and home, the film establishes itself as coming from the perspective of Laura. The first shot we see of David is from her view of opening the door to meet him. The film’s frame is the same as Laura’s gaze. During their first conversation we follow Laura in and out of her kitchen and we too are initially suspicious of this handsome stranger. As David wins over Laura with his charm and stories from her dead son, we too are won over.
Near the end of The Guest, the film’s tone shifts from that of a thriller with escalating tension to something that resembles a slasher film. It never fully mutates into the horror genre, but the final stand-off between Anna and David is very similar to a cat-and-mouse chase that you would find between serial killer and final victim. Shifting Anna from an actively sexual female gaze to being a near final girl works especially well here because she was never the one being objectified in the film. The audience has always associated its gaze with that of Anna. The typical final girl story first associates itself with the killer, but then pivots to identifying with the last living character. This final girl then bests the killer, with the support of the audience. But in The Guest we have never associated with the killer. We have always kept an emotional distance from David and seen the story from the female perspective.
It is not surprise that The Guest takes on a female gaze, given the history of the filmmakers. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have collaborated on many films over the last five years. They first worked together on A Horrible Way to Die and more recently on You’re Next. You’re Next has been widely discussed as not only one the best horror films of the last decade, but also one of the most feminist.
Wingard and Barrett’s creation of these feminist films (that are still damn good and fun too) can be read as refreshed vision of films made by filmmakers with the female gaze. The female gaze in The Guest makes for a more natural story than the converse. (Objectifying and being seduced by David, the exotic “other,” in the secluded hometown has more likely narrative flow than gazing on Anna or Laura.) And in the end, that should be the goal for any filmmaker. Have enough respect for the story and belief in both your characters and the audience to tell the story as it should be told, from the appropriate perspective, regardless of the gendered gaze.
Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer for All Things Horror. You can find her on Twitter at @dedecrim.
