Review: You’re Next (2011)

Cast: Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci, AJ Bowen
Director: Adam Wingard
Country: USA
Genre: Horror | Thriller
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: You’re Next opens in theaters on Friday, August 23rd. For an additional perspective on the film, please read Julian’s review.

Moviegoers can be forgiven for assuming that You’re Next, a blackly comic, semi-subversive home-invasion thriller directed by Adam Wingard (V/H/S 1-2, A Horrible Way to Die) and written by Simon Barrett (A Horrible Way to Die, Dead Birds), is just another attempt by a Hollywood studio or distributor to piggyback on the unexpected box-office success just a few short months ago of the similarly premised The Purge. Given when You’re Next and The Purge were actually made, the influence probably goes in the other direction. You’re Next actually premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program to positive reviews and enthusiastic responses from fest goers. The merger between You’re Next’s distributor, Lionsgate, and Summit, pushed You’re Next to the backburner, where it sat for the better part of two years. As part of their marketing strategy, Lionsgate rolled out You’re Next to horror-friendly fests (SXSW, SFIFF) this past spring before giving it a proper, mainstream release. Few films are probably worth a two-year wait, but You’re Next definitely is.

You’re Next actually premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program to positive reviews and enthusiastic responses from fest goers.

In a few, deft strokes, Wingard and Barrett brilliantly set the stage for bloody, gory things to come via a prologue. Three masked men descend on a remote cabin and attack a vacationing couple.. The couple, a middle-aged man (Larry Fessenden), and his twenty-something girlfriend (Kate Lyn Sheil), don’t survive the attack, but their deaths, arriving minutes after they’ve had sex, suggest the masked killers may be motivated by a twisted moral code typical of the slasher sub-genre. What motivates the killers, however, remains an unanswered question for most of You’re Next’s running time. To say more, of course, would be to say too much, especially considering that You’re Next is cleverly constructed around multiple reveals and switchbacks, each one undermining or upending what moviegoers know or think they know about the characters, their respective backstories, and their motivations in You’re Next.

The initial assault on the cabin also sets up audience expectations. It’s brutal, bloody, and gory (though significantly less gory than the recent Evil Dead remake). Whatever their motivations, the killers are well-trained and well-armed, making them formidable opponents for the Davisons, the unsuspecting family at the center of You’re Next. Wealthy and privileged, the Davisons have gathered for the weekend at their remote, rural estate to celebrate the multi-decade anniversary of Paul (Rob Moran) and Aubrey (former scream queen Barbara Crampton), the patriarch and matriarch, respectively, of the family. The family includes eldest son, Drake (director/actor Joe Swanberg), and his wife, Kelley (Margaret Laney); middle son Crispian (A.J. Bowen), and his girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vinson); the next oldest, a daughter, Aimee (Amy Seimetz), and her filmmaker boyfriend, Tariq (horror director Ti West); and youngest son Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and his goth-glam, Zee (Wendy Glenn).

Even before they sit down for their first and ultimately their last dinner together as a family, superficial niceties give way to the expression of long-held, if barely concealed, grievances typically of large families regardless of socio-economic class. Drake uses his “eldest son” status to berate and needle his siblings. He  saves the most cutting verbal abuse for Crispian, slinging contempt-tinged barbs about his physical appearance with obvious glee while his over-indulgent parents do little, if anything, to stop him. It’s just as obvious, however, that those grievances run deep in the entire clan. There’s enough resentment, egotism, and narcissism to fill an entire mansion, but it also sets up the Davison clan as distinctly dysfunctional and thus, incapable of the altruism and cooperation necessary to survive the masked killers’ concerted assault on the mansion.

You’re Next initially seems to devolve into familiar home-invasion tropes with the killers taking out the Davisons and their guests one-by-one, Ten Little Indians-style, but that’s just Wingard and Barrett once again playing with audience expectations.

You’re Next initially seems to devolve into familiar home-invasion tropes with the killers taking out the Davisons and their guests one-by-one, Ten Little Indians-style, but that’s just Wingard and Barrett once again playing with audience expectations. Not that bodies don’t fall. They do. Several characters die gruesomely inventive deaths typical of slasher films (where inventive “kills” are everything). One character in particular seems unkillable, absorbing multiple penetrations from sharp objects before finally succumbing to massive blood loss. Wingard and Barrett play that character’s death for black comedy, but it’s not a one-off experience. Wingard and Barrett want to shock and scare their audience (and they do), but they also want to make them laugh, often simultaneously and just as often uncomfortably.

The character dynamics in You’re Next can be read as a critique of the American nuclear family, maybe even the still ongoing financial crisis or rather the evident pleasures audiences can expect from seeing the wealthy and privileged getting skewered by a combination of complacency and greed. Maybe that’s reading too much into You’re Next. It’s not reading too much into You’re Next, however, to say a certain mid-film revelation, seemingly simple, but new to the horror genre, turns You’re Next completely on end. Wingard and Barrett upend the “final girl” trope familiar to horror fans. True to her name, the “final girl” faces off against the killer or killers in the last reel, her friends dead or otherwise incapacitated. Too often the final girl’s resourcefulness stretches the audience’s suspension of disbelief to the breaking point and beyond. You’re Next doesn’t and therein lies its genius.

You’re Next would be a lesser film without smart casting, of course. Atypical for a horror film, there’s not a single wrong-note performance to be found, though unsurprisingly the performers who exit the screen early impress the least. Of the actors who make it past the halfway mark, Sharni Vinson gives a standout performance. Vinson’s extensive dance training – she appeared in Step Up 3D – serves her extremely well here, helping her handle the physically demanding role convincingly. She’s just as adept, however, in handling the role’s emotional side too.

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Mel Valentin

Staff Film Critic

Mel Valentin hails from the great state of New Jersey. After attending New York University as an undergrad (politics and economics double major, religious studies minor) and grad school (law), he relocated from the East Coast to San Francisco, California, where he's been ever since. Since Mel began writing about film nine years ago, he's written more than 1,600 reviews and articles. He's a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Online Film Critics Society.

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