The genre, although entertaining, can get stale as the formula can become repetitive. Adam Wingard’s 2011 low-budget horror film You’re Next takes this genre and flips it on its side, completely subverting expectations from the start.
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You’re Next begins with a voyeuristic view of couple Talia and Erik having sex. After she takes a shower, the camera shows a closeup of the motion sensor light outside turning off, although Talia is entirely unaware. When Erik walks towards the bathroom, he plays the equally upbeat yet apprehensive Dwight Twilley Band’s “Looking for the Magic” on his CD player. He then sees “You’re Next” written on the window with blood when a masked killer abruptly comes in and demolishes Erik with a machete. “Looking for the Magic” continues to play, and the film then cuts to the next victim, The Davisons, an extraordinarily wealthy but estranged family.
In a typical home invasion fashion, the parents, Aubrey (Barbara Crampton) and Paul (Rob Moran), invite their family to their secluded country mansion for their wedding anniversary. The reunion consists of their four children Felix (Nicholas Tucci), Drake (Joe Swanberg), Crispian (A.J. Bowen), and Aimee (Amy Seimetz), along with their significant others Zee (Wendy Glenn), Kelly (Margaret Laney), Erin (Sharni Vinson), and Tariq (Ti West), respectively. Things begin with a fight at the dinner table but quickly turn dangerous when an unknown assailant in an animal mask shoots a crossbow through the window, killing Tariq.
Right away, no one in the family is particularly likable. Professor Crispian and his teaching assistant turned girlfriend come off as self-absorbed. Drake and his wife’s only personality trait is that they are thriving financially, Aimee continuously talks about how she lost weight, and Felix and his goth girlfriend just seem a little off. The character development doesn’t go too far to connect the viewer with the family, making it easier for them to die, which happens right away.
After Tariq dies, hell breaks loose. Three masked killers (fox mask, lamb mask, and tiger mask) keep shooting crossbows through the house, one wounding Drake. Aimee tries to escape by running outside to get help, but a hidden wire slices her throat. The film then takes a turn from the home invasion trope when lamb mask tries to kill Crispian’s girlfriend Erin, but she fights him off and escapes. As each person gets killed one by one, the assailants begin to realize killing Erin might be more complex than initially.
You’re Next is unique in which, yes, it follows all the clichés and conventions of the genre, but it also wholly flips it. Making the characters unlikeable makes the murders less horrifying to watch. The most likable character is Erin, and the fact that the family would be dead without her makes the viewers root for her more than anyone else. Everyone in the film is selfish in one way or another, caring about their status or jobs, but Erin is selfless by trying to save a family that she hardly knows. She isn’t the typical “final girl.” She doesn’t have the stereotypical attributes of being “boy-like” or a virgin and doesn’t simply survive with a bit of luck; she knows what she’s doing and how to do it: setting up traps, using weapons, and brutally murdering fox mask with a meat tenderizer. While setting up nail traps, Erin reveals to Zee that she grew up in a survivalist compound.
You’re Next does a fantastic job of not giving away who these killers are and why they’re out to get them for the first half of the film. The movie keeps the tension going with the one-shot location of the country house, creepy lighting, and sound design. The music in the film is all mainly diegetic, with “Looking for the Magic” repeating throughout, with the only non-diegetic music being the original score titled “Run motherf***er”: shrieks of violins, anxiety-inducing synths, and low-hitting bass. The track perfectly encompasses the feeling of dread, anguish, and foreboding violence that the characters feel.
After Paul discovers food and sleeping bags upstairs, he concludes that the killers have been in the house, most likely spying on them. As he relays this information to Felix and Zee, he is immediately killed with a machete. The masked killer then begins talking to Felix and Zee, revealing that they are in on the killing. When Erin overhears them in the other room talking about the family inheritance they will get when everyone dies, she realizes that she is on her own to finish everyone off.
The film ends with everyone dead besides Erin. When Felix’s cell phone rings, Erin answers, and Crispian begins apologizing for chickening out on killing his mother, revealing he was in on it too. As Crispian arrives and sees Erin on the phone, he tries to lure her to stay quiet because how was he “supposed to know she was so good at killing people”? She kills him by stabbing him in the neck and eye, and a police officer shows up and shoots Erin, believing she’s the killer. As the police officer opens the front door, he succumbs to Erin’s front door trap, the axe hitting him in the head. The film then ends with his blood splattering the words “You’re Next” on the wall, possibly referring to a sequel?
The film turns ten this year. Will there be a long-awaited sequel? Unfortunately, screenwriter Simon Barnett claims it may never happen. When interviewed for The Hollywood Reporter, Barnett stated, “We’re hoping to work with [You’re Next lead actress] Sharni [Vinson] again soon on something, so maybe we’ll call her character Erin in that film, and people can try to figure out what her intervening decade must have been. The full answer is after You’re Next sold, but before it was released in theaters, we talked a bit about making a sequel if the film was successful. We were excited to make one if there was any interest, but I never actually wrote anything down. Adam and I just bounced some ideas around, and then when the movie flopped, I was glad I hadn’t done any actual work.”
In the end, You’re Next delivers precisely what it needs to: it is a modernized slasher film that is gruesome, bloody, and surprisingly funny. It feels like a mix between Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration (1998) and Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers (2008) with its selfish characters, family tension throughout, and masked killers, but with its unique twists and turns. Wingard focuses on the film’s foreboding atmosphere, voyeuristic camera angles, slow-motion shots, and ominous soundtrack to deliver a well-made slasher film.
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