Adam Wingard’s You’re Next takes a familiar horror scenario – a group of individuals find
themselves trapped in a remote location, besieged by malevolent forces hell
bent on killing them one by one – and makes it feel fresh and new. Part of this
comes from the extremely canny filmmaking, which is aware of horror movie
clichés and invokes or subverts them to pitch-perfect effect throughout.
Another way that You’re Next
manages not to feel like the hundreds of other slasher films of yore is in the
plot, which branches out from the basic premise, throwing a couple of
surprising twists into the mix to keep the proceedings lively and consistently
tense. Utilizing a cast of indie staples (including horror director Ti West and
mumblecore maven Joe Swanberg) along with such genre stalwarts as cult-horror
scream queen Barbara Crampton, the film feels like that rarest of all things in
today’s cinema: something unique and interesting. Not content to pander to
genre fans, the film instead aims to take them on an exhilarating ride, which
it pulls off with aplomb.
After a quick and suitably nasty prologue that gives a taste
of the threat our protagonists will be facing we are introduced to Crispin
(A.J. Bowen) and his girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson), who are traveling to Crispin’s
parents house deep in the country in order to celebrate their anniversary. The
celebration is doubling as a family reunion of sorts, as the grown children and
their respective significant others (including Swanberg as Crispin’s cocky
brother and West as a boyfriend of their sister) meet under the same roof for
the first time in a long while. As they’re wont to do, old tensions come to the
surface as sibling rivalry and other divisions come back into play. It isn’t
long however, until the domestic drama is interrupted by homicidal figures
lurking in the woods. Wearing creepily blank animal masks, these intruders
(armed with crossbows and knives) are hellbent on exterminating everyone
inside. As the body count begins to rise, the nature of the threat is revealed
to be more complex than initially suspected, as well as one member of the
family who is revealed to have much more to them than meets the eye.
As mentioned before, the plot is somewhat basic. Just three
years ago there was a slasher film with a similar premise in The Strangers. But while that film was content to wallow in sadism
and cheap nihilism, You’re Next
spins off into something altogether unexpected once the initial siege has
begun. I want to be careful about spoiling too much here, as much of the fun
comes from the turns that the plot takes as the film progresses. Several times
I thought that I had a pretty good handle on what the film was doing and where
it was going, then suddenly the film would throw out a curveball and I was
forced to reconsider my notion of what the film was doing. It’s such a pleasure
while watching a modern horror film to be unsure as to what route the plot will
take and which characters will end up alive or dead.
Wingard knows how to scare his audience as well and wrings
some terrific jump scares from the proceedings. Clearly well-versed in horror
movies, he manages to mix it up by playing on the audience’s knowledge of genre
clichés and deftly misdirecting them. Even the moments that you expect to be
fakeouts – the typical “oh, it was just the cat” scares – work like gangbusters
here. As good as Wingard’s direction is, a lot of this effect also comes from
Simon Barrett’s clever script, which balances character moments and scares very
effectively. One character, in particular, is destined to become a new horror
fan favorite, along the lines of Ash from the Evil Dead films and from where
I’m sitting it’s more than deserved. In a genre as stuffed with memorable
characters as the horror genre, it’s exhilarating to see a new one come along
and blow everyone away for the first time (as definitely happened in the
screening that I attended).
All of this would not be quite as effective without the
support of a cast and everyone involved here is game. A.J. Bowen is suitably
schlubby and his relationship with his family is in many ways the most
developed of any of the characters. The other brothers and sisters are all up
to the challenge of pulling this material off, but there are two notable
standouts. First of all is Joe Swanberg; while I couldn’t stand the guy (or his
film) when I saw Silver Bullets earlier
this year, here he is perfectly smarmy as the “favorite brother,” providing
some of the film’s biggest laugh lines. The other performance that must be
mentioned is Sharni Vinson as Erin, who gets perhaps the hardest role to play
and accomplishes it so well that she reveals herself as someone who deserves to
be a star immediately so that we can see her in more movies. The antagonists
are creepy throughout; even as their role in the story is revealed to be more
complicated they retain their air of menace.
I don’t want to say too much about You’re Next; the film was picked up by Lion’s Gate prior to the
screening and is not due for release until fall of 2012, a ridiculously long
time to shelve a movie as filled with commercial potential as this one. I hope
that whenever they cut a trailer they are very coy about what transpires,
letting audiences discover it as mine did. This is one of those films that, if
handled right, could be an audience favorite, building a fanbase and setting
the stage for a new horror franchise. For right now, Wingard, Barrett and
company have crafted one the best slasher film in years, one that isn’t a
satire or a deconstruction, but rather a wickedly fun piece of work that hooks
you from the beginning and takes you on a ride that you won’t soon forget. I
can’t wait to see the film again and I hope that, when it is finally
theatrically released, people discover it and enjoy it as much as I did.
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