You’re Next | Review

Indie horror filmmaker Adam Wingard’s latest, You’re Next, is certainly an homage to home invasion genre horror classics. Attempting to avoid the pratfalls of an all too familiar set up, the film gets high marks for creating a refreshingly strong female protagonist and an extremely high vibe of tongue-in-cheek audacity. While the absence of misogynist undertones makes this an extremely pleasurable horror crowd pleaser, the predilection for cheap laughs lightens the thrills to such an extent that it flies past black comedy into parody during key sequences.

The film opens with the brutal murder of a man and his newly acquired young ingénue in a swank country abode. The words “You’re Next” get scrawled on the windows in between the murders of these two victims. Soon after, we’re introduced to the neighbors (Rob Moran and Re-Animator ’s Barbara Crampton) as they drive to their mansion next door to engage in a family reunion. As they set up the house, their four children arrive, each bringing a significant other (played by a number of notable younger film alums, like directors Ti West and Joe Swanberg). But their son, Crispian, (AJ Bowen, star of Wingard’s 2010 A Horrible Way To Die ) brings a former student turned girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vinson). As the dinner table turns into your B grade psychodrama, arrows start flying through the dining room windows and the residents realize that murderers wearing creepy animal masks are trying to kill them. With each murder, the level of gore and catchy one-liners rises considerably, and, while entertaining, are going more for laughs than anything terrifying. As the family falls apart, it becomes evident that Erin is really damn good at killing people. She has her reasons.

There’s a lot to like with Wingard’s latest, a film he says he made specifically for the midnight crowd, one looking for a wild, raucous time. However, due to the film’s tendency to induce laughter rather than horror, the second half of the film lags considerably in between cool props and Sharni Vinson being delightfully awesome as she kills antagonists. Worse, the big reveal is somewhat of a clichéd letdown. What could have ranked up there as the US equal of France’s excellent 2006 film, Them (and no, The Strangers, 2008, is not that equivalent) falls out of competition with a hurried and ridiculous conclusion. But that’s not to say there’s a lot of fun new ways of killing people introduced in You’re Next . Oh, and Barbara Crampton’s presence should be fan boy heaven, but while she’s great in her bit, she’s ultimately under-utilized.

Reviewed on September 10 at the 2011 Toronto Int. Film Festival – MIDNIGHT MADNESS Programme.

96 Mins.

Rating 3.5 stars