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How entertaining? ★★★★☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 11 August 2013
This article is a review of YOU'RE NEXT. |
“For people with money, you’re lucky,” Erin (Sharni Vinson) to Crispian (AJ Bowen)
Bearing similarities to THE PURGE, though YOU’RE NEXT premiered first two years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, the premise of a wealthy family set upon in a brutal night of home invasion by masked murderers is even more thrilling. Director Adam Wingard delivers carnage with gusto and macabre glee.
After clunky scene setting, including dialogue such as, “We’re so isolated up here,” the plot becomes lean. The Davison family has come together for the 35 year anniversary of pater Paul (Rob Moran) and mater Aubrey (Barbara Crampton). Their grown-up children and respective partners join them:
- Drake (Joe Swanberg) and Kelly (Margaret Laney),
- Crispian and Erin,
- Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and Zee (Wendy Glenn) and
- Aimee (Amy Seimetz) and Tariq (Wingard).
It’s a full house at the country retreat. Squabbles and the ability to push familial buttons are raised to awkward levels at the initial dinner together, alleviated and heightened by the first death. Director Wingard sacrifices himself early. An arrow in the face. Outside the house is an anachronistically armed, but niftily lethal, assailant. However, there appears to be another within the building. Panic and high-pitched screaming are punctuated, sometimes literally, by gruesomely over the top homicide.
Bearing similarities to THE PURGE, though YOU’RE NEXT premiered first two years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, the premise of a wealthy family set upon in a brutal night of home invasion by masked murderers is even more thrilling. Director Adam Wingard delivers carnage with gusto and macabre glee.
After clunky scene setting, including dialogue such as, “We’re so isolated up here,” the plot becomes lean. The Davison family has come together for the 35 year anniversary of pater Paul (Rob Moran) and mater Aubrey (Barbara Crampton). Their grown-up children and respective partners join them:
- Drake (Joe Swanberg) and Kelly (Margaret Laney),
- Crispian and Erin,
- Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and Zee (Wendy Glenn) and
- Aimee (Amy Seimetz) and Tariq (Wingard).
It’s a full house at the country retreat. Squabbles and the ability to push familial buttons are raised to awkward levels at the initial dinner together, alleviated and heightened by the first death. Director Wingard sacrifices himself early. An arrow in the face. Outside the house is an anachronistically armed, but niftily lethal, assailant. However, there appears to be another within the building. Panic and high-pitched screaming are punctuated, sometimes literally, by gruesomely over the top homicide.
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The catatonic state of the parents, and offspring cluelessness, looks to mean easy pickings for the besiegers. However, Erin proves to be a resourceful adversary for their foes, trying to marshal and becalm her comrades simultaneously. How could a student in her final year of an English literature Masters be so adroit at defence/preservation? The revelation of her backstory is hilarious. (Before you watch, play a game to see if you can guess how she accumulated her ridiculously useful skillset.) It is fantastic to see a badass female lead, especially in a horror, the least progressive genre perhaps? However, Erin’s Ripley-style ability to take on the psychopathic is off set by other female cast members’ gratuitous nudity. Shouldn’t there be an equality in the skin department for the sexes? Slasher flicks are enjoyed by everyone right?
YOU’RE NEXT opens on a sex scene that eventually culminates with the next door couple being offed, in preparation for the Davison’s arrival. The deaths are primarily of the hack, bludgeon and stab variety, and the violence is close quarters adding to the tension. The arrows merely force the mini-mansion residents to assess their dwindling options. Looking to be a massacre, the filmmakers pace the excitement well, allowing Erin to stand shoulder to shoulder next to her male action counterparts, demoing similar punishment absorption prowess – jumping through glass, falling two stories, etc.
Looking for depth? There is a mention that the father is a retired employee of a defence contractor; but that nugget of info is not really taken further. YOU’RE NEXT doesn’t re-invent the genre wheel, but is exuberant fun.
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