Behind the Couch

2014 Dir. Adam Wingard Following on from You’re Next and A Horrible Way to Die , The Guest is the latest genre-melding offering from director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett. As with their previous collaborations, it fondly harks back to genre movies of yesteryear while slyly subverting tropes and conventions audiences are now all too familiar with. All bets are off as rules are bent, expectations toyed with, and the viewer is sucked into Barrett’s twisted and twisting story, which emerges as one of the most interesting - and entertaining - genre offerings of recent years. The Guest begins as David (Dan Stevens), a recently discharged soldier, arrives at the home of a family still grieving for the death of their son, whom he claims to have been good friends with. David is too good to be true and represents something for everyone in the family, filling the role of their absent son. Only daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) is wary, but she fails to find anything to support her ...

2009 Dirs. Yannick Dahan and Bejamin Rocher When a high-ranking police detective is found murdered by a gang of homicidal mobsters, a small group of his closest colleagues on the force take it upon themselves to avenge his death. Heavily armed and determined to see justice done, they manage to infiltrate the upper floors of the suburban high-rise apartment block that serves as the criminals’ hideout. But during the raid things go wrong and the cops find themselves overcome by the gang, who take them prisoner and begin to torture them.   Meanwhile, on ground level, the gang members become aware of a strange disturbance in the streets immediately surrounding the building, with the sounds of explosions and sirens filling the air. Incredibly, it becomes apparent that the commotion is being caused by ever-growing crowds of crazed people with a hunger for human flesh. It’s not long before the gang of criminals and the captive cops realize they are trapped together on the top fl...