You’re Next
Little did I know, as I watched their 2011 release, “A Horrible Way to Die,” that writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard had a film just as devious waiting in the wings, although I’m sure they might have preferred Lionsgate to release it before 2013, ideally. No matter; we have it now, and horror fans can rejoice that with its release, a strong new set of voices continues emerge to (hopefully) keep the genre from giving into the dark side of constant reboots and utter predictability of formula.
Despite its title, however, “A Horrible Way to Die” was less a horror movie than a psychological thriller with two distinct personalities at its center, as a killer (played by AJ Bowen, a high school classmate of mine) is released from prison, and his ex-girlfriend (Amy Seimetz) is fearful for her life, now that he is free. Both main actors return to work with Wingard in “You’re Next,” with Bowen playing Crispian, one of four children of a wealthy couple celebrating their 35th anniversary, and Seimetz playing Aimee, the lone daughter among the siblings. All four have convened at an isolated home, with their significant others in tow, to celebrate their parents’s milestone, but they don’t particularly like each other, and tensions run high. It’s not long into dinner, however, when people begin to get picked off by an unknown assassin wearing an animal mask. For now, any animosity must be put on hold while they try to survive this attack.
Little clues can be picked up as each of the siblings reach the house that might lead to the reasons for this coordinated attack on this particular family. The killer(s) have already taken the lives of their neighbors, as we see in the prologue, but it’s easy to deduce that that was simply a necessary act to isolate the central family further, and have a “base” of sorts, rather than a directly connected event. As he drives up with his girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vinson), Crispian mentions that his father is recently retired from a well-known defense contractor, but Erin has been keeping things from Crispian, as well, which will serve her well when arrows start flying through windows. The reasons behind the attack, however, are less important to me as a viewer, though, than how the attack is handled, and how things play out, and Wingard and Barrett are quite shrewd in the way they do both. On the one hand, the film feels like a traditional slasher movie, with a masked assailant picking people off one at a time, while on the other hand, I couldn’t help but think of an old-fashioned murder mystery, either, because there’s always this constant feeling that someone in the family (or, at least, at the house) must be involved with this plot. This is the film “The Purge” tried to be earlier this summer, yet while that disappointing thriller was a hit out of the gates, “You’re Next” probably won’t quite be so successful, which is a shame, because it gets a lot more right in executing its premise than that film did.
Endings seem to be important parts of the overall impact of a film for Wingard and Barrett, and while I felt as though “A Horrible Way to Die” was elevated by its ending, “You’re Next” suffers a little bit because of the way things play out. Don’t get me wrong: the last series of shots in “You’re Next” is a doozy and a half, and a great way for this malicious little thriller to finish up, but before that, there’s a twist of sorts that could be figured out pretty early on, and even though it led to one of my favorite exchanges of dialogue of this or any year, I was disappointed to see how spot-on some of my surmising about the plot was when it got down to it. That said, it’s great to see a horror movie that doesn’t play things safe and easy, and understands formula, but doesn’t feel shackled by it. Genre fans have been getting a lot of such gifts, in my opinion, the past few years, if you know where to look. It seems like some studios are starting to pay attention.
