Humorous horror film makes viewers queasy
Family can be a killer. A couple (Rob Moran and Barbara Crampton) celebrate their wedding anniversary at their mansion by reuniting their four grown children, each of whom brings along their significant other.
In the beginning, “You’re Next” is mainly focused on the college professor son, Crispian (AJ Bowen), his former student and current girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vinson). There is some serious tension between the siblings, Crispian, Drake (Joe Swanberg), Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and Aimee (Amy Seimetz), and bringing them all under one roof reopens old wounds. That ends up being the least of their worries after a gang of men in cheap, plastic animal masks start suddenly attacking and killing them, creating some brand new gushing wounds.
The victims become trapped inside the house and the rest of the film plays out like a sadistic mix of “Home Alone” and “Tom and Jerry.”
This horror film has a heavy dose of ink black humor throughout that rubbed me the wrong way in the beginning. The graphic violence inflicted on suffering people was not making me yuk but instead making me want to cry, “Yuk!” The film also relies heavily on shaky-cam, hand-held camera-work that produces a jerky and disorienting image. When the attackers start their ambush, shooting arrows into the family at the dinner table, the film resorts to this frantic camera movement. It is lazy film making that draws the viewer out of the action. For awhile I felt physically and morally queasy.
Then the carnage keeps escalating to the point where it becomes morbidly funny. The game of cat and mouse is so outrageous that it can’t be taken seriously. Part of the fun is witnessing all the inventive kills that the writer, Simon Barrett, and director, Adam Wingard, come up with. I wouldn’t dare give them away, but I will say my favorite involves a common kitchen utensil.
The film is a brief 94 minutes long, but it still could have been shortened by a few minutes. An hour into the film most of the characters are sliced and diced beyond repair, and the few remaining ones are battling each other. A staple of the genre is kept alive by having a female character become the one who fights to the end. Her determination and ingenuity, benefited by the use of old-school synthesizer music in the score, pushes the film through a slightly overextended final act.
What sets this film apart from other run-of-the-mill slasher films is that it has an energy and a wit about it. Stabbings, shootings and throat slittings get tiresome after awhile if there is nothing more to them than the acts themselves. It is the anticipation, the mood and the execution (no pun intended) of the kills that make a memorable horror film. Any butcher can cut a slab of meat. A talented one knows how to make it tasty.