In a tony beach community outside the city, beautiful, twenty-two-year-old, Alex, is living in the richly-appointed vacation home of mid-fifties Simon, a wealthy, divorced businessman. Alex is hoping that their arrangement will become permanent. Having arrived in the city two years ago, Alex has burned many bridges, the latest being Dom, a middle-aged man whom she one night awoke to discover him strangling her. The next morning, she stole a large stash of cash from him, took off, later met Simon, and is now enjoying Simon’s pool, his painkillers, the beach – where she one day nearly drowns due to the riptide – and being his arm candy at various beach community parties with his wealthy middle-aged friends.
Yet Dom is outraged, inundating her with countless texts and phone messages, vowing revenge, all of which Alex nervously ignores. After all, she long ago spent all his cash and has no way to pay him back. So far, she’s pleased that Simon believes her many lies, including that she’s a college graduate whose mother is an art teacher. Unfortunately, she miscalculates one day while driving his car, hitting a guardrail and breaking a rear tail light, which she hopes he won’t be mad about. That night, accompanying Simon to a party, she meets Victor, the handsome, thirty-five-year-old husband of aging Helen, the parties hostess. When Victor playfully yanks Alex into the pool, Simon watches, unamused.
The next morning, Simon coolly tells her that their arrangement is over – given her behaviour at the party, the broken tail light on his car – and has his assistant drive her to the train station, but not before she steals some of his cash and his watch. Convinced that Simon merely needs a break and will want her to return to him for his annual Labor Day party in just six days, she first tries to call various middle-aged men whom she’s been with in the city – none of whom want anything to do with her. Deciding to bide her time for six days at the beach community, she finds herself at a house party for several twenty-somethings sharing a house, pretending to have been one of the many invited. But when she unwittingly sleeps with Matt, the boyfriend of a now enraged young woman, she’s kicked out.
Still being threatened by Dom by phone, who now knows that she’s in the beach community, Alex next finds herself chatting with a group of teen boys on the beach, including Jack, who claims he’s nineteen and insists on getting her number, which she gives to him. With only four days till Labour Day, and after sleeping overnight on the beach, she meets Nicholas, a thirty-something former actor who’s now the beach house manager for George, an aging, wealthy art collect and one of Simon’s friends whom Alex had previously met. Convincing him to let her stay at George’s home since he’s out of town, the duo enjoy biking, a hearty meal, alcohol, cocaine, and dancing wherein Alex, curious about a valuable painting, reaches out and touches it – accidentally leaving behind a small, but noticeable, scratch.
Mortified, and realizing he’s made a grave mistake, Nicholas kicks her out. Alex wanders the beachside, stealing cash from a tote bag in the bathroom and allowing herself to be fingered by an aging gentleman, then meets Calvin, a young boy, and his nanny, pretending to be a friend of the nanny’s wealthy employer. The Nanny brings her back to her employer’s lavish home, where Alex meets pre-teen Margaret, searches for painkillers and cash, text’s Jack, and convinces him to come get her.
Jack picks her up and takes her to a posh restaurant where they have dinner with his dad, middle-aged Robert, a wealthy, L.A. based movie producer who’s looking after Jack over the summer. Jack, we learn, loathes his father and is taking a gap year before college given his recent, shockingly violent threats against Annie, his former high school girlfriend whom he may also have physically attacked. He’s now taking powerful psychiatric medication.
Stepping to the Ladies Room, Alex runs into twenty-something, Dana, a former friend from the city who wants nothing to do with Alex, whom she’s long since regarded as bad news. After dinner, Jack takes Alex to a friend’s party with several twenty-somethings, none of whom are happy to see him given Annie, as well as Lily, a fourteen-year-old whom Jack once gave drugs. For her part, Alex again receives alarming texts and calls from Dom, steal’s pills, then gives Jack a kiss, noticing that his lower teeth have braces.
Not wanting to stay at his dad’s and stepmother’s estate, Jack brings Alex to the empty home of a high school friend he knows; the family is out of town. Happy that she only has two more days till Simon’s Labor Day party, Alex decides to have sex with Jack, who’s inexperienced and instantly falls in love with her, much to her chagrin, though she has sex with him again soon after to pass the time. After enjoying the beach, Alex is alarmed when Jack punches through a wall after complaining about Robert, and is further alarmed when he invites over his friend, MAX, who tells him that Robert is freaking out that he’s vanished – especially since he left behind his psychiatric meds. Moreover, Max is flabbergasted that he broke into the house – which belongs to none other than Annie, the former girlfriend he violently threatened, and her family.
After Max leaves, Alex gets another call from Dom, who’s now arrived at the beach community. Alarmed, Alex promises to get the cash she owes him the next morning – which is Labor Day. Explaining her quandary with Dom to Jack, Alex is relieved when he offers an easy solution: they’ll steal the needed cash from his dad’s safe early the next morning, as Robert and his new wife will be out boating. At last Alex relaxes, since all her problems will soon be solved. She’ll get the money from Robert’s safe, ditch Jack, give the money to Dom, and go to Simon’s Labor Day party, where he’ll surely welcome her to his side again after a heartfelt apology.
Driving off with Jack on Labor Day morning, Alex is floored when he delivers a bombshell: there is no cash since there is no safe in his father’s house. He lied to keep Alex at his side and promises to love and protect her. Alex demands to be let out of the car, causing Jack to burst into tears – then crashes the car into a guard rail. Certain that Jack is ok, and seeing that she’s okay, as well, Alex walks off, decides not to worry about Dom, and makes her way into Simon’s lavish Labor Day party and catches Simon’s eye. She’s stunned to the spot when his expression seems both unpleased and uninterested.
In this sun-splashed, but deliberately downbeat scenario, Alex, a distressed young woman hustling for her keep, finds herself tossed to the curb by Simon, her wealthy, mid-fifties boyfriend. Undaunted, she decides to return for his lavish Labor Day party, which is only days away, convinced that he’ll welcome her back. This is only one of many such delusions Alex has, all of which fuel this moderately engrossing character study. In some ways, The Guest is the junior version of Blue Jasmine (2013), in which, similarly, every hopeful prospect for the distraught, increasingly disturbed, Alex reveals an even bleaker reality.
For specialty features, The Guest is best regarded as a potential showcase for a young actor of note. Yet the scenario, though tightly structured, doesn’t quite distinguish itself with revealing or compelling incidents, just a series of mordantly grim situations which find Alex habitually getting the shorter end of the stick – from every man she encounters, from both the rich and the working class. The sameness of her experiences keeps the story from being the slow-moving, heart-wrenching, catastrophic character study it so sorely wants to be.
Alex is both fully present and slightly zonked out, a good-time girl who’s hooked on painkillers and has no idea that she’s nearing her expiration date, and the author presents her in a sympathetic light, even when she makes glaring mistakes, of which there are many. But since the story has no real highs or lows, she becomes emotionally monotone – beyond her lone goal of returning to Simon – and while this might be intentional, it also means that she’s a tragic heroine without memorable dimension.
The supporting characters pop in and out fairly effectively, including Simon, who initially treats Alex like a pretty plaything, then coolly drops her when he’s had enough of her mistakes and misbehavior. There’s also Jack, the drug-addled, potentially violent seventeen-year-old son of a wealthy film producer whom Alex exploits on her way back to Simon’s for Labour Day. The screws do tighten a bit when Alex at last makes her way to Simon’s Labour Day party – you brace yourself for the latest, and perhaps cruelest, disaster to befall her – yet the conclusion is vaguely inchoate in a dated, faux-modernist fashion. In other words, the author strives to create a modern-day House of Mirth, then pulls back.