You're Next (2013)
The gold standard of the home invasion horror subgenre will forever remain Bryan Bertino's The Strangers. Emphasizing the power of intimation and slow-building suspense over graphic demonstrations of viscera, Bertino brought the American slasher back to its blissfully straightforward roots. The story -- a couple already on edge from a failed wedding proposal are tormented and ultimately murdered in their summer home by a trio of masked sadists whose behavior is driven by the sheer, unmotivated joy for human suffering -- was as simple as one could envision, its nightmarish, pulse-pounding horror exacerbated by its complete adherence to the laws of reality. Since that criminally underappreciated landmark terrified audiences out of their domestic safety in 2008, filmmakers have had to work overtime putting their own stamp on the home invasion framework.
When Adam Wingard expressed interest in directing a home invasion movie, noting that they were the only films that still truly frightened him, his frequent writer, Simon Barrett, went to work cooking up a screenplay, infusing it with his personal brand of macabre humor to concoct quite possibly the most exciting, crowd-pleasing, and gleefully gruesome entry in the home invasion slasher subgenre to date. The opening act is definitely the scariest and most suspenseful, as the presence of armed intruders is suggested through the creak of floorboards and doors, as well as reflections of creepy animal masks in windows. Once the masks are lifted, both literally and figuratively, You're Next becomes an exhilarating exercise in watching the bag guys receive their just desserts for the majority of the film, adding up to a slasher that can best be described as "fucking awesome" more so than thoroughly petrifying. Nevertheless, it's thoroughly exuberant, relentlessly bloody, and, surprisingly enough, occasionally poignant.
To celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary, Paul and Aubrey Davison (Rob Moran and Barbara Crampton) take a drive to their fixer-upper vacation home in rural Missouri, where they invite their estranged children and their significant others to spend the weekend: oldest son, Drake (Joe Swanberg), and his wife, Kelly (Margaret Laney); middle son, Crispian (A.J. Bowen), and his former teaching assistant-turned-girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vinson); youngest son, Felix (Nicholas Tucci), and his girlfriend, Zee (Wendy Glenn); and youngest daughter, Aimee (Amy Seimetz), and her boyfriend, documentary filmmaker Tariq (real-world horror filmmaker Ti West).
During a heated sibling squabble during dinner on the second night, a stray arrow is fired through the window, impaling Tariq. As the family panics and runs for cover, the Davisons quickly realize they're under attack from a trio of male assailants disguised in animal masks and armed with crossbows and machetes. With cellphone reception unavailable and no living neighbors to turn to for help, hope for survival appears nil. That is until Erin, who, unbeknownst to anybody, including Crispian, grew up on a survivalist compound under the tutelage of a doomsayer father who taught her how to defend herself at an early age, steps up to the plate and puts her dormant survival skills to the test. As courageous and competent a killer as she may be, though, all the combat training in the world can't prepare her for the conspiracy in which she finds herself entangled.
Straight from the fast-paced opening scene, director Wingard and writer Barrett establish the vibe of a classic maniac-in-the-woods splatter fest. In the bedroom of a forested home, Erik Harson (Larry Fessenden) is having rough sex with a college student named Talia (Kate Lyn Sheil), for whom he divorced his wife. Barrett has written this cold open with nary an utterance of dialogue, the only source of noise emanating from the pleasurable moaning of the unattractive and markedly older man, which is not reciprocated by the conspicuously sexually unsatisfied (and perhaps guilt-ridden) younger woman. Following their one-sided act of intercourse, Erik, who is one moan away from saying, "Man, how amazing was I!" goes to take a shower, while Talia makes herself a drink in the kitchen, where she senses a presence watching her from outside the transparent glass windows. As she slowly turns her head around, Wingard, acting as his own editor, cuts to Erik exiting the shower. To his consternation, the warning, "you're next," is written on his glass door in blood. Looking down, he sees Talia's corpse lying on the floor, drenched in blood. As Erik backs away in hyperventilating terror, a man in a lamb mask sneaks up on him from behind, pins him against the door, and hacks him with a machete. The filmmakers want us to know from the jump that they are not playing around, and boy, does that message come through in a big splash of the red stuff!
As in the best slasher films, Barrett's setup is brilliantly simple in the way he secludes his ten characters within a single, isolated vacation home while providing a clear-cut motivation for their gathering. He establishes a strained familial dynamic between the Davisons through excruciatingly awkward interactions, a lack of affection between the siblings, and overtly phony outward displays of kindness. For some of the dinner conversations, in which the attitudes range from genuine curiosity to passive-aggressive criticism, the filmmakers allow their actors to improvise, utilizing some of their own unpleasant experiences with their own family members as inspiration. Smartly, Barrett withholds the breakout of the promised massacre until the second night during the gathering at the dinner table, where long-gestating tensions reach boiling point and spill over into violence, albeit executed by external forces. The filmmakers seem to suggest that if these strangers weren't summoned to execute this family, the brothers themselves would have taken out the knives. Barrett also uses seemingly innocuous conversations revolving around financial instability, including Crispian's disappointment in failing to obtain a fellowship at the college at which he teaches, to foreshadow the motivation behind the impending assault.
Wingard uses the first act of You're Next to conjure a chilling atmosphere of anticipation and build suspense for his invaders' arrival through the magic of camerawork. For the first night, he and Barrett allow their characters to settle in and await the appearances of their children, insidiously dismantling their sense of safety by way of unsettling noises and details. When Paul and Aubrey first arrive at their home, the front door is mysteriously unlocked, a fact that merely surprises the former, but greatly disturbs the latter. As Aubrey cleans up dirt in her kitchen, she hears the thump of footsteps above her ceiling, a sound that takes on a horrifying significance when Paul enters the kitchen after having lit the furnace in the basement. In a couple instances, Barrett and Wingard make their audience privy to certain omens while excluding their characters from such knowledge. When Aubrey wanders into the kitchen to down a pill with a glass of water, the reflection of an animal mask appears in the window in front of her, watching and waiting. After Paul leaves his bedroom to return to his wife, who's a wreck in the driveway, cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo pans his camera slowly to the left to reveal a closet door suddenly creak inward, as though someone is inside, hiding within the blackness, seeking to evade notice. As Paul ascends the stairs to search for potential intruders, Palermo places his camera behind the railing to intimate that someone is up there, stalking him, biding their time, relishing his ignorance.
During sequences of high intensity and assault, Palermo utilizes shaky handheld camerawork, accompanied by the slow motion and rapid cutting of editor Wingard, to convey the chaos and disorientation experienced by the characters in the middle of it. When the first arrow is fired through the kitchen window, Wingard takes his time building up to the reveal of the murder. While Crispian and Drake air their grievances in front of their palpably uncomfortable guests, it is Tariq who first notices something wrong on the outer side of the window. Rather than show us what he's looking at, Wingard keeps his focus on Tariq's face, which shifts from annoyed to concerned in a flash. Slowly, he stands up and moves toward the window, the sound of petty arguing continuing in the background. Suddenly, an arrow shoots through, breaking the glass. Wingard cuts to reaction shots of his actors, all of whom look up or turn around one by one, their expressions mutating from confusion to shock to horror to devastation. Once Erin turns her head, Wingard cuts to a POV shot of shards of glass on the floor. A gasp for breath commands everyone's attention, and only then does Wingard display his grotesque sight: Tariq standing with an arrow lodged in his forehead and protruding from the back of his head. Wingard milks this moment of realization for every last drop of dread, and when Tariq finally collapses to the floor, the chaos officially commences. His direction is kinetic, with characters screaming their heads off, running for cover under the table or outside the kitchen, holding chairs in front of their bodies as they run across the window to the opposite side of the room. Throughout the proceedings, Wingard combats the brutality of the nonstop carnage with a contrastingly upbeat and deliciously energetic ambience that prevents the story from ever dragging, complemented by a succession of inventively gory set pieces. Wingard is so infatuated with gore that he can't resist highlighting a close-up of blood dripping from a vibrating garrote wire that has just taken the life of one of the most sympathetic characters seconds earlier.
Speaking of sympathetic characters, who are in relatively short supply in You're Next, Paul and Aubrey stand at the pinnacle thereof. Likewise, they're two of the most realistic. Despite their immense wealth that has gifted them their immaculately designed abode, Paul and Aubrey are the nicest and most down-to-earth human beings you could ever hope to meet, let alone have as your parents. Paul retired from KPG a year prior and is reaping the benefits of an "insane" severance package. It doesn't seem as if he or Aubrey is ungrateful for their financial security, but neither do they allow it to consume them or provide an excuse to assume snobbish demeanors. They're goodhearted parents overjoyed to reunite with their children for the first time after years of estrangement. While devoted to one another, Paul and Aubrey prioritize the safety and wellbeing of their offspring at every step, only one of whom is truly worthy of it.
Crispian is a timid and oversensitive pantywaist masquerading as a mere pacifist. When you listen to this chubby-cheeked, petulant pansy whine about being tapped on the cheek or yelled out, you'll want to paci-fist him in the side of the head. For a college professor with a fair amount of meat on his bones, Crispian is infuriatingly gutless. He's sensitive about his weight, evinced when Drake divulges that he used to be overweight as a child (and still hasn't shed much in his adult years), and pathetically uncomfortable with the most painless form of roughhousing with his older brother. Speaking of whom, Drake is a passive-aggressive bully who derives pleasure from belittling Crispian about his excess of fat, adherence to pacifism, and controversial courtship with his former teaching assistant. While his barbs are primarily directed at Crispian, Drake reserves some for his little sister's boyfriend as well, demeaning him for his focus on documentaries and his admittance to a single underground film festival. "What is an underground film festival?" he condescendingly asks. "Do they show the movies underground?" The only people for whom he puts on a display of appreciation are his parents, sucking up to them with the utmost insincere flattery in the hope of attaining their fortune. After receiving a taste of his own medicine in the form of two arrows to the back, Drake does become humbled and more humanized, exhibiting care and concern for the people closest to him, but by that point, it's a case of too little, too late. By contrast, Aimee, the youngest Davison and sole daughter, is also the only genuinely loving and cheerful sibling, elated to see her parents for the first time in years, even referring to them endearingly as "Mommy" and "Daddy," and show off her new boyfriend, and visibly saddened by the childish fighting between her supposedly older, man-children brothers.
Above all else, You're Next provides a showcase for what should have been a star-making performance from Sharni Vinson, an exotic Australian actress who brings to life one of the most intelligent, resourceful, caring, well-equipped, proactive, and quick-witted heroines in modern horror history with equal parts ferocity, sexiness, and heart. It's clear that Barrett turned to Nancy Thompson from Wes Craven's original Nightmare on Elm Street while drafting the characterization of Erin. The similarities between both final women are too striking to be coincidental. Each begins their narrative journey as beautiful, happy-go-lucky, everyday young women who, in response to extraordinary circumstances beyond their control, mutate themselves into hardened, fearless survivalists with a penchant for booby traps.
At the beginning of the story, Erin is a college student in her final year, working toward her master's degree in literature and basking in the honeymoon phase of her relationship with Crispian. While undeniably impressed by the wealth of her boyfriend's parents, she isn't a gold digger, working unhappily as a bartender to earn her own money. A kindhearted person who values human connections over material possessions, Erin instinctively comforts Aubrey during their first meeting when she finds the latter standing alone in her driveway, shaking and crying. Eager to make a good impression, she offers to help her potential future mother-in-law in the kitchen while preparing for dinner, and agrees to walk to the nearest neighbor's house to request milk. Despite her superior physical appearance and stronger personality, Vinson evinces a tender, playful chemistry with Bowen. Under normal circumstances of sibling arguments, Erin is the type to sit back, look down, and avoid making waves.
That all drastically changes once she determines that this family has been personally targeted by long-planning assailants, spurring her to tap into the resources she acquired as a child and go into survival mode. While everyone else cowers in the corner, seeming to accept their fate, Erin takes charge, locking every door and window, arming herself with every possible weapon at her disposal. Beyond simply gripping the handle of a kitchen knife or screwdriver or mallet, she constructs a series of nailed planks, placing one directly below a broken window where an intruder couldn't see it. (The result is the deliriously most cringe-inducing and fist-pumping counterattack in the movie.) Erin has the forethought to refrain from hiding in the basement, reasoning that one of the killers could pour gasoline down the stairs and light a match. She acts swiftly in response to an oncoming attack, jumping straight through a glass window the second she senses someone behind her.
Vinson imbues Erin with the resilience to pick herself up after and continue running for her life, but is smart enough to remember to do so with a painful limp to convey the vulnerability that makes her credibly human. In her simplest and most genius move, Erin limps out the front door and climbs into the broken kitchen window to deceive her attackers into believing she ran into the woods. Invariably one step ahead, Erin waits patiently beside the window, and as soon as someone steps inside, she stabs a knife into his skull. After whacking a man in a tiger mask (played by his own creator, Simon Barrett) in the back of his leg with a cheese grater, Erin stabs him in the back of the head with it. Due to a fully developed sense of self-preservation, she doesn't make the same mistake Alice Hardy made with Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th and assume the killer is dead. No, this badass bitch proceeds to stab the grater into the back of Tiger Mask's head repeatedly to both ensure his death and fully purge her own fury.
Watching a woman effortlessly hack away at a group of slashers is, by design, not particularly scary, but it is emphatically cathartic and exhilarating. Barrett doesn't expend much time in fleshing out Erin's backstory to illuminate her unleashed abilities, opting to reveal it succinctly in an expository dialogue with Zee. In the centerpiece shot that symbolizes the badass spirit of You're Next, Palermo frames Vinson within the shattered kitchen window, her face dotted with blood, her hands gripping an axe. While the intellectual brilliance of Erin may stem from the page, Vinson uses her physicality to project honest emotion, conveying incomprehensible, unforgivable betrayal through tears that surge from her unblinking, enraged eyes and down her stone-cold visage to her quivering lips -- all while she stands immobile in prolonged silence, keeping her intentions masterfully contained and unpredictable. A stark contrast to the animalistic scream of fury she emits while taking down an adversary originally assumed to be an ally.
While there can be little debate that Vinson is the star of You're Next, longtime horror heavyweight Barbara Crampton and her onscreen companion, Rob Moran, invest the gory, gonzo hacking and slashing with a necessary dose of human emotion courtesy of a pair of heartfelt performances. From their quiet drive to the rural home to the affection with which Moran puts Crampton to bed, these two feel like a real couple who has been married for 35 years and is looking forward to spending another 35 together. Once the mayhem is unleashed, arrows are stabbing into the walls, and throats are being slashed, Moran and Crampton accurately portray the heartache, shock, desperation, and helplessness of parents powerless to protect either their children or each other. In particular, Crampton's reaction to her only daughter's agonizing murder evokes the relatable humanity with which she counterbalanced the talking-severed-head insanity of Stuart Gordon's 1985 splatter comedy, Re-Animator, and her final scene, in which she's left alone to sob in her bed after asking Paul to stay with her, serves as a heartbreaking reminder as to why she's one of the greatest actresses still working in the genre today. As early as her exit arrives, Crampton uses her innate sweetness and unabashed vulnerability to make every second of her limited screen time count.
Contrasting sharply with the emotional power supplied by Moran and Crampton are Nicholas Tucci and Wendy Glenn, both of whom deliver similarly lifeless performances which deprive the intended twist of its ability to fully surprise. From the moment of their introduction, it's obvious that something is off about Felix and Zee. As unpleasant and contemptuous as the personalities of Crispian and Drake may be, at least they have personalities one can analyze and distinguish. Felix is a blank slate who greets his mom with an obligatory hug and his dad and male siblings with a formal handshake, and Zee is a goth with short, black hair and an attitude that's almost sexy in its indifference. At no point during the massacre do either even attempt to simulate authentic human behavior. Neither sheds so much as a single tear, their voices bereft of panic. They appear far too aloof from the beginning, unintentionally signifying their own complicity in the plot. By the time Barrett lets the cat out of the bag regarding Felix and Zee's intention to butcher his family to inherit his parents' fortune, Tucci and Glenn have already spoiled the surprise on account of their borderline psychopathic blandness, rendering it more inevitable than shocking. Which is a shame because the twist itself -- the spoiled, emotionally stunted children of affluent parents are so desperate for money that they're willing to murder their own family -- isn't as far-fetched as we'd like to imagine.
Similar to The Belko Experiment, You're Next is a body count movie, meaning the perverse pleasures lie in a barrage of gory murders committed by bladed psychopaths. Also comparable to Greg McLean's all-out slaughter fest is the balance Wingard strikes between serving up visceral, no-holds-barred bloodshed with a remarkable level of restraint. The kills imagined by Barrett and executed by Wingard are brutal, inventive, and bloody, but the latter refrains from crossing the line into a reprehensible glorification of violence. Rather than lingering gratuitously on a shot of a knife protruding from someone's head or an arrow embedded in someone's forehead, Wingard frequently cuts away at moments of blade-to-flesh penetration. For example, when an invader slams his machete downward at Aubrey, Wingard cuts to a shot of her family downstairs, accompanied by the scream of the now-slain victim. When her family barges into her bedroom, her body is displayed lying in bed with the machete protruding from her head. In depicting the first onscreen slaying of Erik, Wingard cuts rapidly between close-ups of his eyes widening with horror, close-ups of a machete rising and descending, and concluding with a streak of blood splattering across the windowed door.
For the more harrowing murders of Aimee and Paul, Wingard indulges in a brief extreme close-up of their throats, slashed wide open as they lie on the floor, grasping their throats and choking on their blood. After cutting away from the axing of Kelly, which is set up like a murderous version of golf, Wingard returns for a close-up of the axe lodged in the left side of her face, burying her eye in a cascade of blood. He emphasizes the suffering of Drake's stabbing through close-ups of his face contorting with agony, groaning while staring at his killer in wide-eyed incredulity. Barrett's cleverest kill is ascribed to Aimee, who, in an attempt to run to her car and bring back police, runs straight into a strip of garrote wire strategically strung across the porch, slitting her own throat. For this scene, Wingard employs slow motion to build apprehension for a setback that never could have been predicted.
He takes a layered approach to his treatment of gore, using some to foster horror and poignancy, and some for laughs. Nowhere is this more evident than when Erin smashes a blender into the top of Felix's head, plugs it into an outlet, and literally scrambles his brain. It's gruesome, cathartic, and deliciously twisted. Garrett's sense of gallows humor doesn't stop there, extending it to the eccentric personalities and instances of violent slapstick: Felix slipping on pea soup while mocking Erin for its cold temperature; whining to Drake, "Will you just die already? This is hard enough for me," while stabbing multiple tools into his torso; Drake's comical streak of bad luck with getting shot by arrows in the back or shoulder every time he tries to protect one of his loved ones.
How does one differentiate between a "classic" ingredient and one that's simply "cliched"? I calculate by effectiveness. The horror genre is chockablock with motifs that are nearly impossible to avoid when crafting a new entry, but some function better than others. In terms of setting, Barrett and Wingard strike gold, stranding their characters in a vacation home that's equally imposing, expansive, and awe-inspiring, surrounded by tall, slender, leafless trees and backdropped by a forest. Establishing shots convey both its luxurious beauty and solitude. Like most slasher villains, the assailants in You're Next wear masks. However, in a refreshing change from the emotionless, white face that characterizes Michael Myers and John Gallagher Jr.'s anonymous murderer in Hush (whose favorite weapon is also a crossbow), or the hockey mask immortalized by Jason Voorhees, these creeps -- at least two of whom served in the military and are desperately hard up -- wear masks designed as a lamb, tiger, and fox, perverting the adorability and wholesomeness traditionally associated with said animals. In a more meaningful deviation from their 70s/80s brethren, once their motives are explained, they're permitted to show their faces and use the power of speech, even though both twists spoil their aura of mystery and reduce their capacity to terrify.
On the flip side, Barrett indulges in my least favorite trope that dogs every horror script that utilizes it: forcing characters to put themselves in danger through irrational behavior. Because the tone is more like a pitch-black splatter comedy than a straight-faced horror, this blemish doesn't slaughter the fun of You're Next, but it cheapens the suspense and limits character identification. For starters, while Paul is opening a closet in his bedroom to check for intruders, Crispian sneaks up behind him and rests a hand on his shoulder, jolting him into spinning around. Why didn't he just call out to his dad from the doorway? And of course, to artificially inflate the release of tension, Wingard matches the shoulder touch with a piercing scare chord. After learning that the killers are already inside the house, Kelly screams, races downstairs, out the front door, and through the woods, screaming for help. It might have been a nice gesture to alert her husband and in-laws about what she learned on her way out. Not only is she running where the other two assailants are hiding, but she's screaming at the top of her lungs. Would a silent run not have sufficed? Is she trying to draw their attention to her whereabouts? Why doesn't she just wear a neon sign around her chest that reads, "Come Get Me"? Then once she arrives at Erik's house, she sees his unknown-to-her lifeless body sitting on his couch, and confused as to why he's not letting her in, she begins banging on his door and cursing at him. When a character shows such little value for their own life, it limits my capacity to value it on their behalf. Aimee, meanwhile, is so irrationally desperate to prove her agility to her family that she insists on running outside to call the police, tearfully whining, "I'm the fastest. You guys never give me any credit for anything. You don't believe in me." Or maybe your family just loves you enough to warn against going outside where the crossbow-wielding madmen who just murdered your boyfriend are stationed? Just a thought. And Zee, while still catching her breath after being put in a chokehold, struggling to stand on her feet, screams at the person with the upper hand, as if to beg her to finish her off.
In addition to directing and editing You're Next, Wingard co-composes the score alongside Jasper Justice Lee, Kyle McKinnon, and Mads Heldtberg. Heightening the dread and chaotic exuberance of the inceptive dinnertime assault is a percussive and thumping heartbeat-like rhythm reminiscent of the score in the opening shootout of Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses, likewise a modern love letter to the golden age of slasher cinema. An exciting, propulsive synth score accompanies Erin as she makes preparations to retaliate Home Alone-style, aurally complementing her measureless resolve. The signature tune of You're Next doesn't emanate from the background music, however, but rather a 1977 diegetic rock song: "Looking for the Magic" by the Dwight Twilley Band, which is played with humorously maddening repetition on a stereo as an accompaniment to a pair of slayings. Wingard achieves a dual success with this unconventional technique, contrasting the savagery of the violence with a soothing, buoyant beat and romantic lyrics about a man's lifelong mission to find true love, and hearkening back to the era of the slasher boom.
For horror fans who prefer their carnage candy to be served with a side of grim humor, their villains to come equipped with masks and pointed weapons, and their protagonist to match, if not outright exceed, the ferocity of their adversaries, You're Next delivers a taut 95-minute roller coaster of gleefully grotesque fun. For those who demand their home invasion thrillers to be exercises in unrelenting, unadulterated tension, entirely grounded in bleak reality, devoid of a triumphant Hollywood ending, consider giving another greeting to Bryan Bertino's Strangers instead.
6.8/10
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