You’re Next is a brutally efficient horror flick

You’re Next manages the rare feat of breathing new life into the home-invasion genre, one that has seen more than its fair share of staid retreads in the last few years. Director Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die) has crafted an incredibly brutal and violent take on the home-invasion story, while incorporating a few curve-balls and surprises into the mix.

The home in question here is a large countryside mansion, which serves as the venue for the Davidson’s (Rob Moran & Barbara Crampton) 35th wedding anniversary dinner. The couple have invited their four children, along with their significant others, to celebrate their anniversary together as a family in their newly-purchased remote country mansion.

Tensions immediately begin boiling over during dinner, as the meek Crispian (A.J. Brown) immediately gets into it with his overbearing alpha-male brother Drake (Joe Swansberg). Their bickering is fairly short-lived however, as a barrage of arrows begins pummeling the dinners from outside the home, quickly picking off a member of the party.

Thus begins an unbelievably tense and insanely bloody stand-off between the increasingly depleted ranks of the dinner party, versus an unrelenting gang of animal-mask wearing assailants.

What sets You’re Next apart from the beginning is the sheer size of the cast. While most home-invasion films are generally centered on a besieged couple or a small group of friends, there are a full 10 possible victims in the Davidson household, which allows Wingard to showcase a wide array of pulverizing death scenes. This is a film that definitely earns it’s R-rating, with a virtually non-stop bombardment of throat slitting, head bashings, and one amazing kill involving a kitchen appliance.

The increasingly shrunken ranks of the houseguests quickly begin mounting a counter-assault against the wave of masked intruders, led by Crispian’s Australian girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson), who just happens to have been raised in a survivalist camp in the Australian outback, by her apparently forward-thinking nutcase of a father. In an ultra-violent version of the Home Alone booby-traps, Erin rigs up a series of inventive weaponry using whatever tools she has on-hand, which manages to spur the assailants on with an increased vigor to quickly and decidedly kill all those left in the house.

You’re Next wisely leaves the audience in the dark about the assailant’s motives until the very end of the film, allowing the mystery to fester throughout the constant slayings. In an ode to Clue or the works of Agatha Christie, the dinner guests may not all be what they seem, a subplot which even when finally revealed is far from the final twist in the film.

Wingard has setup You’re Next as a direct descendent of 1970’s exploitation film, from the disorientating hand-held camera style, down to the film’s pulsing throwback electronic soundtrack. The film is imbued with a dark comedy that still allows you cheer on even the most horrific killing, yet is consistently intense throughout its relatively short 92 minute running time.

Rounded out by a supporting cast of horror vets including director Ti West (House of the Devil) as Tariq and Re-Animator’s Barbara Crampton as the stuck-up matriarch, You’re Next takes a typical horror trope and turns it on its head, adding enough mystery and stomach-churning violence to remain unpredictable and surprising throughout.