You’re Next has fun playing with traditional beats in the horror genre to give the home invasion film a fresh spin. Writer Simon Barrett cleverly shifts beats of the horror genre to different locations in the story to throw the audience off of where You’re Next is going to end up. Plus any time you can get animal masks into a movie, you have to do it.
It’s mom and dad’s (Rob Moran and Barbara Crampton) wedding anniversary, and the whole family has joined a family retreat in a cabin in the country. This allows family friction to resurface: perceived favorite siblings Drake (Joe Swanberg) and Aimee (Amy Seimetz) draw the ire of Crispian (AJ Bowen) and Felix (Nicholas Tucci). Also along for the ride are the significant others of each sibling, including newcomers Erin (Sharni Vinson), the former student of Crispin, and Zee (Wendy Glenn), Felix’s goth girlfriend. After the family gathers for dinner, masked men jam their cell phones and start picking off family members.
You’re Next doesn’t really have a huge twist, but its main one is revealed halfway through the film. Once the twist happens, the story is allowed to shift from trapped in the house horror film to revenge flick. This change in tone feels pretty organic as the backstories of the characters have been set up and the “reveal” fulfills the logic requirements. Also, since the hunted/hunter relationship of the characters becomes convoluted, the fates of each character are never quite as obvious as they should be.
Despite the serious nature of the story, lots of humor is drawn from the conversations. The humor works because of how well the actors play straight. For example, one character might have a little bit of necrophilia, but when they bring it up, the other character simply freaks out and scolds the person for being childish. The humor isn’t really called out by funny sounds or music; it just happens as a result of the story, and it never overtakes the overall severe tone of the film. It’s refreshing in a horror film for a person to remark on how amazing it is that a blender could be such an effective weapon.
Lots of the credit goes to the actors who are mostly character actors in the indie circuit. Sharni Vinson is the big winner here: matching charisma with steel resolve. Joe Swanberg does good work with an underwritten part. Wendy Glenn sells her character’s mix of humor and grimness. More importantly, no one gives a bad performance.
You’re Next sounds like a standard slasher film. Kudos to the creative team who flips the title on its head to create an effective original movie while still satisfying fans of the genre. One question though: who still has a five disc player? Next time try to secure the Spotify or iTunes financial backing.