You're Next

Not a lot of people know this but there is a little known subgenre of horror called Get A Lot Of People In A House And Kill Them. It may lack refinement, finesse, and plays fast and loose with tone and plot, but Get A Lot Of People In A House And Kill Them movies deliver if all you're looking for is a movie where a lot of people are killed in a house. Shot in 2010, You're Next has received a belated release because of director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett's subsequent work on V/H/S and its sequel.

Eight couples converge on a secluded country home as the retired parents of brothers Crispin (Bowen) and Felix (Tucci) welcome their sons, and their wives and girlfriends, to a lavish evening meal. However, before they can finish dessert they are set upon by a gang of mask-wearing, crossbow-wielding, knife-waving ne'er do wells that have been lying in wait in the woods outside. Who they are and why they're choosing to cut a bloody swathe through this ensemble of party guests remains a mystery.

Unfortunately though, You're Next doesn't know what it wants to do with itself. On one hand it's a cheapo, ill-made horror where the filmmakers devise some uninspiring ways to kill off their cast, and on the other it's a black comedy, a parody of cheapo, ill-made horrors. If Wingard and Barrett had embraced the ridiculousness of it all from the off we'd be looking at a better movie, and reading a better review, but the funny stuff arrives far too late in the day. Who wouldn't laugh along to lines like, "F**k me next to your dead mother"? More of that would have been great.

In delaying the laughs, Wingard and Barrett render their movie lopsided. And there's a lot of wasted time - the opening ten minutes, the formulaic early scare - that doesn't serve the plot well, while some of the reveals are added as an afterthought: we learn that a meek character can suddenly mash heads in with hammers and can assemble some Home Alone type booby traps because she grew up on a survivalist's compound. Convenient, that.

But when it's funny it's really funny, and one time Home & Awayer Sharni Vinson makes a strong case for the next Queen Action Heroine.