You're Next

Between this and The Conjuring, I really hope we're not seeing an incredibly annoying trend. Both of these movies are getting critical praise for being "classically scary", reminiscent of classic horror movies, or, perhaps the dumbest, enough to satisfy horror movie fans. I hate the idea of settling for horror movies.

People think that I hate horror films in general. This isn't the case. I just haven't seen anything to revive my hope in recent years. Sure Mama had me creeped out, but at no point was I genuinely scared. The Conjuring was experienced with plenty of laughter and teasing. The last horror film I truly enjoyed was Cabin in the Woods. But that's if you count it as a horror and not a comedy. And at that rate, I guess if you consider Prometheus horror, add that. But no "pure" horror film has made me feel happy to be scared, or even scared at all, in a heck of a long time.

You're Next succeeds similarly to The Conjuring; It's definitely fun to watch. But unlike The Conjuring, it's obviously trying to be something far more interesting. The obvious character reveals, the forced exposition and character development, incredibly forced character dialogue, all of it comes together in a poor attempt to be something shocking and interesting. And even though the violence is definitely there, with plenty of blood to satisfy the average gore-lover, we've also seen violence that has made my jaw drop farther, and violence that's made me laugh harder than what this film offered.

All that being said, You're Next is fun enough. It has silly gore and even sillier music reminiscent of campy zombie and slasher flicks. The story itself would be fine and would work great for some gorey fun if it just stuck to that. Clearly there was an attempt to make us like certain characters more than others. But I would have had more fun hating everyone for their awful personalities than be force fed reasons to like or dislike them. All of this exposition leads up to an obvious "twist", unsatisfying, and stupid, followed by an incredible final death perhaps. It makes you laugh, but the laughs feel unintentional until the last third or so of the movie.

The audience was what made this fun. It was like watching a campy movie with the perfect group of friends, all yelling at the screen and making the best out of characters that, as my friend put it "have the least amount of worry for their safety (he's) ever seen". Even the characters who are supposed to be written out to be smarter than average make stupid choices. Why, the student who was raised in the harshest of circumstances and is now finishing her masters at one point jumps over a railing knowing full well her leg was just run through with a piece of glass...because...? It's moments like these keeping the film from being anything beyond a laughable passing attempt at horror. And for a movie with such high praise and such an obvious attempt to be something more, I don't think I can get over it.

Rank - 2/5