‘The Guest’ Checks In and Then Takes People Out

I’m not an overly suspicious person, but I still practice common sense when encountering strangers or hanging out in unfamiliar places. I clock the people, I clock the exits, and yes, when I’m staying overnight in a sketchy motel, I absolutely check the mirrors and vents for peepers or cameras. It’s not paranoia… it’s the sign of someone who watches *a lot* of genre films about bad people doing bad things to innocent shlubs. The new South Korean effort, The Guest, is one such film, but it comes with an interesting twist before shifting gears into an effective little cat-n-mouse thriller.

Young-gyu (Han Min) and Min-cheol (Lee Ju-seung) are bad guys. They may not be out there physically hurting others, but as proprietors of a seedy motel in a rural area, they make a living recording the private antics of their guests. Sex, showers, the occasional bit of violent abuse. They record it all and pass it along to a gangster who has them on a short leash. The two friends owe him money, and unless they keep paying with these videos, they might just find themselves at the bottom of a river with a few organs missing. So, bad guys with excuses. Things turn one night, though, when a guest (Hyun Bong-sik) brutally murders a young woman — and discovers that the two workers have the evidence.

Director Yeon Je-gwang makes his feature debut with a tight, albeit simple thriller, and while it won’t necessarily shake your soul, The Guest delivers a darkly entertaining ride for the entirety of its seventy-seven minute running time. While Yeon opens the film with some text highlighting South Korea’s surveillance society among the people — less about government control, and more about everyone having cameras on their phones and in their houses — the film isn’t really interested in exploring the idea beyond that initial setup. This is less social commentary and more straight-up exploitation thriller, and Yeon understands the assignment.

Things kick into gear very quickly after establishing the motel’s geography and sparsely populated setting, and it’s not long before the silent guest is prowling the halls in search of the two young men. A brief moral dilemma arises even after the murder, and it’s there were we see the difference between Young-gyu and Min-cheol. While the former is happy to hand the footage over to the loan shark, Min-cheol is more than a little hesitant. It’s his fault that they’re in this mess as the borrowed money went to pay for his mother’s much-needed medical procedures, but he knows in his gut that this is wrong. Obviously. Lee does good work with that balance between doing what’s right and what’s far, far easier, and it’s arguably enough to tip this bad guy into a character we can root for.

That said, Yeon keeps the downtime to a minimum as the motel’s power is cut and the deadly game of cat and mice begins. Chase scenes, narrow escapes, and sequences that might have you holding your breath make up the bulk of The Guest‘s remainder, but Yeon has one or two unexpected story beats in store for viewers too. It all builds to a bigger set-piece outside of the motel itself before ending somewhat abruptly. Does it kill the vibe? Not really, but it does feel like there was still some gas in the tank that didn’t get fully exploited here.

The Guest is ultimately a simple, one-note thriller, but no one should ever tell you that’s a bad thing when it’s executed well. It’s an interesting setup giving us bad guys to root for because they’re going up against a worse guy, especially when these aren’t cool bad guys or anti-heroes — they’re just sleazy pricks spying on the unaware. That’s an interesting dynamic, and paired with some strong suspense scenes and a couple surprises, the result is a mean little ride that does what it came to do and not a damn thing more.

The 2024 edition of the New York Asian Festival runs July 12th to July 28th. Follow along with our coverage here.