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It’s not even October yet, but this year has already been a pretty remarkable year for horror flicks—with movies like The Conjuring and The Purge bringing in surprising sums at the box office. So director Adam Wingard is probably hoping that his home invasion thriller, You’re Next, will be the next big horror hit.
You’re Next travels to a big, remote country house with Aubrey and Paul (Barbara Crampton and Rob Moran), who are planning to celebrate their 35th anniversary with their family. But as the family members and their guests sit down for an awkward family dinner, they come under attack by a crew of men in animal masks. One by one, the guests are killed in horrible, bloody ways. But the killers are surprised to find that one of the guests is quick to fight back.
You’re Next is an extremely uncomfortable film—but not for the reasons you might expect. Sure, there are men in creepy masks stalking their victims—and a number of people die in pools of fake blood. But the gruesome murder scenes are actually quite pleasant when compared with the film’s unnatural dialogue and stilted performances. At times, the lines are so poorly written—and poorly delivered—that it all feels awkwardly improvised.
Really, it’s hard to say whether the film is actually supposed to be funny. It’s hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously—but it’s just not wacky enough to be a horror-comedy, either. It’s just…stupid.
The characters, meanwhile, are so obnoxious that you won’t be especially shocked or horrified by their ridiculously long, drawn-out deaths. In fact, you might even cheer on the killers as they do away with one spoiled, pompous idiot after another. The only normal one in the bunch is family guest Erin (Sharni Vinson)—or at least she seems perfectly normal…until she beats a man to death with a kitchen utensil.
For a while, the unintentional humor almost makes You’re Next entertaining. But after a few over-the-top scenes, it turns into little more than a long, boring game of cat-and-mouse as the killers try to hunt the remaining family members. It seems to be simply going through the motions, drawing out the story to reach an acceptable runtime. But it’s so dull and monotonous that you might find yourself wishing that they’d just kill everyone and get it over with already.
If you’re heading to your local theater, looking for a laugh, you can choose to see a comedy—or you can choose to see You’re Next. They’ll pretty much have the same effect—because the scariest thing about this horrific mess is that it actually got a theatrical release.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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