LogFAQs > #965200538

16. You're Next (221 points)

Why I Chose It:You're Next was director Adam Wingard's first film to hit some big time success - at least, for this type of film. Its low budget made it an easy sleeper hit at the box office, and its subversive tone and atypical lead female hero set a benchmark and template for a whole decade of smaller and bigger horror films alike with similar ideas and ambitions - films from The VVitch to Ready or Not.

Snake: 3
Inviso: 5
FFDragon: 7
red13n: 8
Johnbobb: 9
Suprak: 10
Tom Nook: 14
Lightning Strikes: 17
Plasmabeam: 17
Fortybelowsummer: 18
thesmark: 18
BetrayedTangy: 20
Jcgamer107: 24
PrinceKaro: 24
Rockus: 27

Snake - This is one of my favorite films ever made. Youre Next is endlessly clever and surprising, but simple at the same time - it takes the slasher genre and deconstructs it, but not in so much like a Scream humorous satire sense, but in a way that puts the usual final girl victim on the same level of the killer or killers right from the start of the film. Erin is already a trained survivalist - she doesnt need to transform into an unrealistic badass over the course of the film, shes already as much of a threat to the home invaders as they are to her. The best part is - they dont even know it. I like to imagine the animal masks as a fable-like metaphor - you have the obvious predators - a fox and tiger; but then you have a mask thats a lamb - representing prey. The prey Erin takes surprising advantage of, and the lambs the animal masks on the other hand thought they would easily deal with. Its a nice little bit of psychological symbolism that goes a long way towards establishing some nice thematic ground for the film. For example - Erin wears no mask but still hid that more violent part of her because she wanted to be normal.

Besides that though, it is just hilarious and cathartic to see Erin completely dismantle this group of ex-military guys and the secret dirty aspirations of the family she was so desperate to be a part of - the normalcy she wanted becomes shattered, and all masks off. The start of the night is chaotic and a total bloodbath; these are still dangerous killers after all, but to see them get so frustrated and practically abandon the whole mask thing cracks me up - imagine if Jason just got fed up and threw his hockey mask off midway through the film - thats his most iconic feature, he could never! What made films like Scream or Behind the Mask so amazing is because they understood the silliness inherent with the genre but could play it seriously when they needed to and honored the parts that still made slashers relevant & meaningful to audiences everywhere. Youre Next is able to enter that fabled pantheon because Wingard and Barrett knew and understood the same facts, but made it gorier, arguably funnier because of how straight and realistic it's actually played, and remembered that at the end of the day, these are all just people doing their best to escape past trauma but getting dragged back into the same repeated cycle they were always trapped in and so desperate to escape from.

Inviso - Home invasion horror movies have the potential to be very hit-or-miss, but they usually fall into the same trappings of a group of masked killers breaking into a house and terrorizing some hapless victims who are just in the right place at the wrong time. Theres a reason why the first Purge movie didnt make this list, because having not seen it before, even I know its largely just a generic-ass home invasion film. Youre Next is different though, for a variety of reasons. Its got SOME comedy, but not in a forced way. No, instead the comedy is built from the characters and their natural personalities (which is made better by the fact that theyre all family, so the interpersonal relationships have established reasons for being what they are.)

Additionally, I appreciate the fact that, though it starts out as your bog-standard psychos invade storyline, theres a twist, and it turns out to have been a complete ruse by members of the family to get their inheritance. Suddenly, the killers have motivations, and the brutality and psychopathy of the kills (of which theyre all largely different, despite sharing the same general variety of weapons) has some added flavor. But none of that would matter without an amazing Final Girl in Erin, who turns into a complete badass very early on in the movie. If everyone just listened to her, they wouldve all survived (except Tariq and the neighbors, who were dead before Erin even knew there was a problem). Its just such a unique and interesting take on the genre, and its actually fun to watch, unlike similar films sharing the home invasion pedigree.

FFDragon - The Blender. THE BLENDER.

Red13n - Don't think about the fact that being the only survivors of an overcomplicated murderplot that reuslts in collecting wholly on their family inheritatnce is more than a little suspicious. Even if somehow the plan did work, when you are the only survivors of this there is no way this ends in anything but jail. It just isn't fucking happening. But don't worry because they inadvertently were going out with and brought along the ultimate survivalist so their murder plan is going to get screwed up and they are all going to die. Nevermind that these two should know these things about each other, at least a little bit, they don't. At one point we get a setup like the tables are going to get turned and turn into a home alone scenario, but nope we stick with the generic chase, fail, and murder. Then a cop comes in is dumb and falls for the trap oops.

Johnbobb - I was never a big fan of home invasion horror movies, and I never knew why. The concept seems solid enough, but the BIG ones of the time like Funny Games, The Strangers, The Purge, The Collector... none of them really clicked with me. Then I saw You're Next. The invader wasn't some mysterious big bad, it was more like a mysterious whodunnit that bordered on comedic at times due to how incompetent many of the people involved were. The final girl wasn't the lovable virgin who lucked her way to the end, she was a real goddamn survivor. There's a lot of Scream inspiration here I think, and anyone who participated in the 90s horror ranking doesn't need to hear me rant about THAT movie all day again.