The Guest List
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Director: Cathy Yan
Writer: Abbie Q
Based on the novel by Lucy Foley
Cast: Brie Larson, Austin Butler, Milly Alcock, Josh Segarra, Emma D'Arcy, Max Minghella, Topher Grace, Cameron Monaghan, Jay Ryan, Chloe Bennet, Stephen Root, Pete Ploszek, Rupert Grint, Maria Doyle Kennedy
The Wedding Night (Now)
As the guests dance, a storm rages, and the lights go out on the wedding night. When they return, there is a trail of bloody footsteps that no one notices and a scream.
The Day Before
Aoife (Maria Doyle Kennedy), a wedding planner, and Freddy (Jay Ryan) own a 10-bedroom property on Cormorant Island called the Folly. It’s a small island off the coast of the Connemara region of West Ireland, only two miles wide. Aoife is from Dublin, and Freddy is an Englishman. A significant event, the wedding of Will Slater (Austin Butler) and Julia “Jules” Keegan (Brie Larson), is tomorrow.
Hannah (Emma D'Arcy) and Charlie (Max Minghella) are wedding guests who are on their way by boat. They’re a married couple, and this is a weekend away from their two kids. Charlie and Jules are old and close friends, but Charlie dislikes Will. The boat captain tells them about the history of this island where his family has lived for centuries. As the boat nears the island, they spot a cormorant bird known in local folklore as “a symbol of greed, bad luck and evil.”
Jules and Will got engaged after only a few months of dating. Jules runs a successful online magazine called The Download. She also comes from a wealthy family and owns a large house in Islington. Meanwhile, Will hosts a show called Survive the Night, a survivalist show, where he (and a camera crew) gets left in the wild to fend for himself. Jules finds him exciting and brings out a more adventurous side of her (he likes to have sex in public places and film her nude). However, Jules received an anonymous note three weeks ago warning her not to marry Will.
Jules is trying on her dress when Will walks in. They’re interrupted by Jonathan “Johnno” Briggs (Josh Segarra), Will’s best man, who needs help because he has forgotten his suit. Jules doesn’t understand why they’re friends since Johnno is a mess, but Will says they have a history. Will is also surprised to see the seating chart and discover that Piers Whiteley (Topher Grace), his producer, is invited to the wedding. Jules had assumed Will would want him there.
Will, Johnno, and the other guys were all schoolmates at a posh boarding school, “Trevs”/Trevellyan’s. However, Johnno and Will’s families were less affluent than the others. Will attended because his father was the headmaster, and Johnno got in on a rugby scholarship. Will’s friends, Duncan (Pete Ploszek) and Peter (Rupert Grint), all ushers in the wedding and show up a little later. Duncan is a venture capitalist, and Peter is an ad exec with a coke problem. Meanwhile, Johnno has been working as an instructor at an adventure center, but he recently started a whiskey brand.
Jules’s maid of honor is her half-sister, Olivia (Milly Alcock). Olivia is young & beautiful but mentally a little “fragile.” Will warns Johnno to stay away from her when Johnno mentions how attractive she is. She attends Exeter and has recently gotten out of a relationship. Olivia and Jules share the same mother. She had Jules when she was young and raised her by herself.
Charlie and Hannah’s boat pulls up, and Jules shows them the chapel where the wedding will be held tomorrow. Olivia goes down to The Whispering Cave, an open-ended cave on the island, and runs into Hannah (Jules and Charlie are off “catching up” without her). Hannah talks about her sister, Alice (Chloe Bennet). As the sun sets, Aoife finishes preparations for the rehearsal dinner.
The Wedding Night (Now)
The sound of the scream cuts through the air, causing the guests to freeze. A young waitress stumbles into the tent, clearly disheveled. “Outside. So much blood. A body,” she says before collapsing.
The Day Before
Hannah and Charlie go down to the drawing room before dinner. In the posh crowd, Hannah feels a little inadequate. Asked about missing the “hen” (bachelorette party), she attributes the absence to her kids thinking it was too expensive.
Charlie explains that he first met Jules as her sailing instructor one summer in Cornwall at the party. (Now, Charlie teaches high school Geography.) Jules laughs about her crush on him that summer. When Johnno interrupts to ask if they ever had sex, the two don’t answer. Suddenly, Hannah spots a masked face pressed against the window, causing her to drop her glass.
The Wedding Night (Now)
Despite the waitress’s pronouncement, Aoife recommends the guests stay inside with the storm outside. However, Will’s friends think a few of them should go together to investigate.
The Day Before
The face turns out to be Jules’s father, Ronan (Stephen Root), playing a prank. Ronan arrives with his latest wife, a very successful property developer and young Frenchwoman. Later, Jules’s mother stands to make a self-congratulatory speech that makes Jules’s blood boil, but Jules manages to suppress her anger.
During dinner, Hannah chats with Johnno. She asks about the “stag” Charlie attended. Johnno notes that Charlie didn’t tell her what had happened. They also chat about Will’s show, which Johnno had done a screen test for (as a duo), but they preferred Will solo. Back in their school days, a rite of passage was “Survival,” Other kids would kidnap younger boys and drop them off in the woods to fend for themselves for a night. Johnno then shows off his new whiskey brand, Hellraiser, and Hannah (an illustrator but now on permanent maternity leave) appreciates the bottle design.
After dinner, Will’s friends want to play a drinking game, and they pressure Charlie into joining them. As the game progresses, the guys get louder and rowdier. Hannah leaves, and she and Olivia go back to the cave to chat and sip vodka.
The Wedding Night (Now)
The four ushers go together to investigate, bringing torches and a first-aid kit.
The Day Before
Olivia tells Hannah about getting on a dating app after a break up. Olivia started sleeping with an older guy. They only got together for sex, so she wanted to take him to one of Jules’s fancy magazine parties to impress him. Instead, she got drunk, made a fool of herself, and he ghosted her. There’s something else involving blood, but Olivia doesn’t say more.
When Olivia returns to the Folly, Johnno drunkenly comes to her, but she gets away from him. Johnny goes to bed, but he’s high and liquored up. He thinks he sees someone in his room, making him throw up in fear.
Meanwhile, Charlie and Jules are upon the battlements of the building, looking out. Jules suggests that maybe they could’ve ended up together and asks Charlie if he’s jealous of Will, but Charlie brushes off the conversation. Jules goes back to her room, but she finds a large clump of seaweed under the covers. Will dismiss it as a prank. Instead, he replaces the bedding from the spare room for his parents, who haven’t shown up yet.
Late into the night, after everyone finally goes to bed, Aoife hears a wailing noise. She grabs a fire poker and goes to investigate. She finds Johnno, who looks scared, miserable, and like he’s been crying. He tells her he must be seeing things and returns to the Folly.
The Wedding Day
Early in the morning, Hannah wakes up and tries to have sex with Charlie, who rebuffs her even though they haven’t been intimate in a long time. Instead, she goes to take a walk outside. She calls home to her mom on her cell, who’s taking care of the kids, Ben and Lottie. As she continues walking, she gets stuck in a bog and is rescued by Duncan and Pete. She rushes back to the Folly afterward.
Meanwhile, the weather report warns of high winds for later that day.
The Wedding Night (Now)
Outside the tent, the four ushers struggle to see in the dark and barely hear each other over the howling wind. They walk along the tract of land between the tent and the Folly, surrounded by bog on either side. Pete gets stuck in the bog, and they fetch him out.
The Wedding Day
As Jules gets ready in the morning, she spots the note (“Will Slater is not the man you think he is. He’s a cheat and a liar. Don’t marry him.”) in her makeup bag. She wonders to herself why she kept it. Finally, she rips it up and flushes it away.
The Wedding Night (Now)
Angus tells them he thought Survival was a stupid game as the four trudges, noting that a kid died from it. Duncan says it was an accident. Fermi also notes that what they did to Charlie left him “a total state.” In the distance, they spot Freddy holding something in his hand.
The Wedding Day (Before the Ceremony)
Outside, the guests arrive, including Will’s parents. As the captain of the last boat, he tells Aoife that a storm is coming. Meanwhile, Olivia wants to tell Hannah the rest of her story to get it off her chest, so she goes to Hannah’s room. But Hannah and Charlie are in the middle of an argument, so she leaves.
Elsewhere, Will, Johnno, Femi and Duncan get dressed, and Johnno squeezes himself into Will’s spacesuit. Will expresses displeasure over the seaweed prank (reminiscent of one they used to pull in their school days), though all the guys deny it was them. Johnny thinks about Will’s “tactics” in their school days that made him famous, despite being the headmaster’s son. After Will passed around a topless photo of a girl he’d slept with, he was untouchable.
As Jules gets ready to walk down the aisle, she asks her father what he thinks of Will now that they’ve finally met. When her father is cagey about it, she gets annoyed. Jules mentions that he was barely in her life, so the least he could do was tell her what she wanted to hear (that he thinks Will is great, etc.). He hesitates, saying that he’s not going to lie to her.
The Wedding Day, Cont. (After the Ceremony)
The ceremony goes quickly, and afterward, there’s a bar set up. Aoife is busy trying to keep people out of the graveyard, where her family has a small patch. She’s surprised at how intrusive it feels to have all these people on the island. Meanwhile, Hannah doesn’t know anyone, so she chats with the barmen, Eoin and Seán. They say it’s an island of ghosts because of the dead bodies of the found settlers. Later, Hannah finds Charlie. He introduces her to Rory, who references the stag night, but no one tells her what happened.
Johnno runs into Mr. Slater, Will’s father. Mr. Slater mentions that he knows that Johnno broke in to steal the GSCE papers back in the day, which allowed Will to cheat and get high marks. Johnny gets out of the conversation quickly. Instead, he runs into Piers, who he met at the screen test. Johnno feels a bit bitter since they rejected him, and he was the one who had suggested the idea to Will to begin with. Then, to Johnno’s confusion, Piers implies that Johnno hadn’t wanted to be on the show.
On the beach, Olivia is feeling miserable. She finds a secluded spot and cuts herself. It reminds her of her abortion. She had gotten pregnant, and then Steven had ghosted her. As she thinks about it, she walks into the water, and before long, she realizes she’s drowning.
The storm is picking up now. Will notices Johnno and Piers chatting and rushes over to them. Soon, however, the crowd notices that someone is drowning. Jules shouts that it’s Olivia, and Will runs in to save her. Jules is initially concerned but then angry at Olivia for making a scene. Aoife finally cuts the tension by announcing it’s time to eat.
Johnny is furious, as Piers has revealed that Will cut him out of the show. Will didn’t steal the idea outright since it was Johnno’s idea, and Johnno knows the truth about what happened to the kid who died during Survival in their school days. Instead, Will told the producers that Johnno wasn’t interested. But the truth is, they had wanted both of them. (Johnno also knows that Will was the one who stole the GSCE papers, but clearly, Will told his father it was him.) However, Will’s agent handled things, so Johnno was never told.
Hannah finds Olivia to check on Hannah. Olivia downplays the incident, but Hannah is concerned. She tells Olivia that she reminds her of Alice, her sister. When Alice decided to dump her first boyfriend, he retaliated by uploading an explicit video and sending it around. She was too ashamed to talk to anyone about it, but Hannah wished she would have since she loved her regardless. Hannah leaves out that seventeen years ago, Alice killed herself.
The Wedding Night (Now)
Freddy rushes up to the four, holding a torch in his hand. Freddy tells them they’ve called the police. As they debate what to do, they realize they lost Pete at some point.
Earlier
As the guests eat, Ronan lives the first speech. Jules recalls how she had asked for wedding venue pitches on The Download, and Aoife had given an excellent presentation. But the deciding factor was the price since Ronan had stopped financially providing for Jules after he married Séverine. Aoife had offered a 50% discount. Still, Ronan gives a heartfelt speech, acknowledging his failings as a parent and how Jules has managed to succeed anyway.
Will then gives a short speech explaining how he and Jules met. He attended a party as a plus one, but his date had to leave. He decided to return to the party and ended up meeting Jules.
As he gives his speech, Olivia recalls how she had gotten drunk at the party where she’d taken “Steven” (now revealed to be Will). “Steven”/Will had gone back to meet Jules (not knowing they were related), who became a better match for him. He ghosted Olivia/” Bella.” It wasn’t until they were engaged that Jules introduced Olivia to her new fiance (“Steven”/Will), to Olivia’s horror and Will’s surprise.
Hannah and Charlie aren’t seated next to each other, and it occurs to her that she’s barely seen him all day. He’s seated next to Jules and is MC’ing the event. He calls up Johnno for the best man’s speech. Johnno is drunk. He tells the crowd about how his suit is too small because Will insisted on a suit that Johnno couldn’t afford, so Johnno didn’t buy a suit.
Johnno then calls to the rest of the ushers, who (in the name of tradition) blindfold Will, tie him up and take him into the Cave of Whispers. Johnny assures the rest of the guys they’ll get him if he hasn’t found his way back in half an hour, but Johnno turns back to talk to Will. Johnny tells him he knows about Piers and the show. He also tells him that the whiskey brand is a lie and that he got fired from his adventure center job for being stoned. He’s been unhappy, and Will screwed him on the one good thing that had happened to him.
The four ushers drunkenly stumble back into the tent, but suddenly Charlie is about to punch Duncan regarding the stag. Charlie finally tells Hannah what happened in Stockholm — they took a ferry out to a place, gave him mushrooms, and they all got naked and went swimming. Then they ditched him naked and alone with no canoe on one of the islands. He was there freezing for hours until they returned and found him sobbing. Charlie insists it must have been Will’s idea.
Hannah is skeptical that it is Will, which makes Charlie angry. Hannah, in turn, accuses Charlie of being inappropriate with Jules. Finally, Charlie admits that he cheated on Hannah with Jules after Ben was born. (They hadn’t had sex in a long time because Hannah’s stitches were still healing.) Hannah leaves angrily.
In the cave, Johnno recounts what happened to the kid who died. Johnno and Will had ordered Loner, a nickname for a kid who had idolized Will, to clean their dorm. He did, but he had also found the GSCE papers, i.e., proof of Will’s cheating. That night, Will decided to play Survival with Loner as their victim. They tied him up to a handrail, the tide came in, and the kid died. The next day, Johnno and Will kept their mouths shut even as the police investigated. One kid, who they nicknamed Fatfuck, might have known something, but Johnno’s dad was the headmaster, so nothing ever came of it. Now, Johnno demands to know if Will knew the tide would come up. Will insists it was an accident.
Finally, Aoife interrupts, saying she was sent to look for Will. Back in the tent, the dancing started. Aoife notes how she’d caught two guests fooling around earlier in the day, married but not to each other. She also thinks to herself about the conversation she overheard just now.
As Will and Jules dance, Jules wants to know what’s going on with him and Johnno. Will asks Jules to drop it, promising he’ll cut Johnno out of his life after tonight. Will then dances with a reluctant Olivia, while Hannah dances with a random man she meets, Luis.
The Wedding Night (Now)
The three remaining guys come across the graveyard. They find a mangled gold crown (which Jules wore in the ceremony).
Earlier
Jules goes looking for them. Meanwhile, Olivia tells Will she must tell Jules the truth about them. She had hoped her note (she was the one who wrote the note telling Jules not to marry him) would help Jules to hit the brakes, but it didn’t work. Will tries to dissuade her, but when Olivia insists, he threatens her by releasing nude photos of her. He pulls her towards the cliff’s edge, causing her shoe to come off.
The Wedding Night (Now)
Next, they find a pale grey silk shoe with a jeweled buckle (the shoe Olivia was wearing).
Earlier
Hannah goes to the bar. She talks with some people who went to Uni with Will. As they chat about Will and a girl who dumped him, Hannah dreads that Alice is the girl they’re talking about. Will dated Alice, and when she dumped him, he posted her video, and she killed herself.
The Wedding Night (Now)
Finally, they come across a body.
Earlier
Jules is enraged with Will after hearing their conversation. She destroys her crown. She then calls out to Will and tells him to come inside.
The Wedding Night (Now)
They see that the bloodied body is Will. Out of the darkness, another person steps toward them.
Earlier
Will leaves Olivia and goes with Jules as instructed. He thinks about how Olivia had reminded him of Alice, the girl who had dumped him. Walking back, he feels confident he can manage Olivia, but Johnno needs to be dealt with urgently. Hannah seethes angrily in the tent as she watches them cut the cake. She edges close, looking at the knife.
When the lights go out, Hannah, Olivia and Jules are all in the tent and furious with Will. Johnno is outside. Will is in the bathroom, cleaning the cake off his face.
The Wedding Night (Now)
The three see Johnno, covered in blood, walking up to them. He’s holding a knife.
Earlier
Will walks out of the bathroom to see Aoife. She admits that the seaweed prank was her. Will is confused, but she says that Darcey (as he knew him, “Loner”) was her brother. She knows he killed him. She offered the venue to Jules to lure him here so she’d talk to him, but instead, she overheard the conversation. Freddy went to school with them, too — he’s the guy they nicknamed Fatfuck. He was Darcey’s roommate and heard them carry Darcey off. Aoife believes the grief of Darcey’s death killed both her parents.
Will sees that she’s carrying a knife.
The Wedding Night (Now)
Johnno tries to explain that he found Will and pulled the knife out (which turned out to be the wrong thing), but the other three guys are screaming at him. The police show up and arrest Johnno. Johnno thinks he will likely go to prison for this, but he wonders who killed Will. He thinks about the person he thought he saw in his hotel room at night — it was Darcey (Cameron Monaghan). He thought he saw Darcey’s ghost there, so he was crying.
Earlier
Aoife stabs Will in the heart.
Several Hours Later
Afterward, Olivia and Jules talk and hug. Hannah and Charlie return home. Things are different, but they don’t have the energy to deal with them. Hannah is glad Alice was avenged; she wishes she could have done it herself.
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