It can be difficult, in a world where horror films are a dime a dozen (especially those of the violent and/or gory persuasion), to pick out the diamonds in the rough. You’re Next is one such diamond. Coming to us from one of the latest cool kids of indie horror, Adam Wingard, this is a smart and entertaining mix of family drama and home invasion horror that does what it says on the tin before opening up that tin and revealing more than meets the eye.
The plot centres on an estranged family who decide to come together for an anniversary dinner at the parents’ secluded mansion. Once there and past disharmony bubbles to the surface, they’re interrupted by an unknown number of attackers who are all wearing animal masks. However, one of the residents isn’t as helpless as the killers might think.
On the surface You’re Next is just another horror-thriller – it echoes many that have come before, from Straw Dogs to The Strangers to this year’s The Purge – and in the hands of a lesser filmmaker it would have been just that. But it’s got enough smarts to avoid falling into that trap. A lot of the recognisable tropes are in there, from creeping floorboards to masked intruders and the like, but it never falls victim to genericness. It’s very knowing when it comes to audience expectations of the genre; what works and what doesn’t, what’s fun to play around with and what’s best left alone. It’s not quite on the same meta level as something like The Cabin in the Woods but it’s still very self-aware and gleefully plays around with conventions.
It has a wonderful sense of unpredictability about it in spite of its familiar set-up. You’re never quite sure where it’s going and that’s a major credit to its director Adam Wingard. Some horror fans may know his previous work like A Horrible Way To Die and his segments in the anthology projects The ABCs of Death and V/H/S, and here he has applied his particular brand of savvy horror to a more accessible concoction.
It’s nice to see a widely released horror that has a bit of an edge to it. It’s never afraid to show the horror of the situation in all its literal bloodiness – it’s been given an 18 age rating for a reason – while at the same time never crossing the line into torture porn (for lack of a better phrase). The violence is nasty and hard to watch and that’s exactly the way it should be.
It promises a lot by and delivers on its initial scene that gives us a taste of the carnage to come and the introduction of its solidly written characters. Speaking of which, one of the reasons the film works as well as it does is that it has a fantastic central female character, played by Aussie actress Sharni Vinson. She proves that not all women in horror films need just be eye-candy who are ultimately just fodder for the killer. Much of the rest of the cast is made up of Wingard’s usual collaborators including AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg and Ti West (director of The Innkeepers and The House of the Devil), to name but a few, who all have a comfortable and very natural chemistry together which only heightens the effect once carnage ensues.
If there’s any major criticism to be made it’s with the ending. While it doesn’t derail the film at all, it arrives at a place where it feels the need to over explain things that we frankly could have worked out on our own. Nevertheless it does so in a way that respects the family drama it previously set up and ties it all up in a way that’s as dramatically satisfying as it is eye-opening.
What could have been a rather pedestrian horror-thriller only there to satisfy either the hardcore horror fans or play entirely to the safe mainstream actually finds a happy (or panic stricken) medium between the two ends of the spectrum. You’re Next is a surprising, darkly comic, ballsy and crucially always tense and scary take on the home invasion movie that’s entirely aware of its own ridiculousness and has a ton of fun with it.
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