TIFF Review: You're Next (2011, Wingard)
September 24th 2011 23:03
You’re Next (Wingard, 2011)
Written September 21, 2011
You’re Next is a fun, thrilling ride that offers blood, laughs, and moments of revenge that inspired boisterous applause from my screening at the Toronto Film Festival. An official selection of Midnight Madness, director Adam Wingard had only finished mixing the film days before it screened at the festival. This past week it was announced the project has been optioned by Lionsgate. Lionsgate tends to be overly serious in their marketing campaigns and thus one can only hope they market it currently, playing up its rather fun slasher film nature and not attempting to turn it into a serious home invasion suspense/horror such as The Strangers or Straw Dogs. You’re Next already seems to have garnered a cult status given the reaction from my audience and it deserves to be portrayed for what it is.
The film opens the way any self-aware slasher film should – with the selling of sex. A couple is bed together, the young woman silent and seemingly bored out of her mind. While he takes a shower, she wanders downstairs to fix a drink and blast some music on repeat. These two are not our protagonists but merely a taste of the terrorization that is to follow. The entire opening sequence is magnificently crafted, from the song usage to the deliberation of the camera’s eye.
Our real story occurs a little ways down the road. The scene is a family reunion at a house a wealthy couple own but haven’t inhabited as of late. We’re quickly introduced to the family. Just enough time is spent on the introduction to the characters wherein we learn the dynamics and move on – the film doesn’t drag and feels natural all while maintaining a welcome self-aware aura.
The violence begins on a rather epic note and continues from there. Wingard finds new and interesting ways to kill the film’s victims (and their captors), back-dropping the action to a soundtrack which runs from standard shrill, loud, ominous notes to upbeat techno music. Most of the action takes place on the main floor of the house, where the lights are bright and glowing, rather than silhouetted in darkness. This is a welcome change. Another nice moment is the obvious homage to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, even if it does turn out to be the least exciting part in terms of action.
The central character becomes Erin (played magnetically by Sharni Vinson) and it’s refreshing to see a unique take on The Final Girl without all of the connotations that term conveys.
Wingard’s film does require suspension of disbelief (when you stop and think about it thereafter, the events of the film would never actually have happened this way given the film’s ‘twist.’ Yet, they needed to in order for there to be a film) and is perhaps a bit too obvious from the get-go (I knew one of the twists as soon as one particular moment occurred). One segment, in which the characters mention the existence of a possible intruder, seems like an afterthought and thus is not realistic.
Nevertheless, these discoveries do not take away from the film’s scares, thrills, or immense entertainment.
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