Produced on a low budget, You're Next had its world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival Midnight Madness program[4][5] and was theatrically released on August 23, 2013, in the United States. The film grossed over $26 million from a $1 million production budget and has since gained a cult following.[6]
Plot
The film opens with a couple, Talia and Erik Harson, having sex. After a shower, Erik finds the message "you're next" written on the window in Talia's blood, and her body lying dead on the ground. An attacker wearing a lamb mask kills Erik with a machete.
Erin accompanies her boyfriend, Crispian Davison, to a family dinner at their vacation home in rural Missouri. Present are Crispian's parents Aubrey and Paul, Crispian's older brother Drake and his wife Kelly, Crispian's younger brother Felix and his girlfriend Zee, and Crispian's younger sister Aimee and her boyfriend Tariq.
During dinner, a man in a tiger mask shoots crossbow bolts through the window, one of which hits and kills Tariq. The others try to contact the police, but discover that their cell phone reception has been jammed. Aimee runs outside to get help, but runs into a Garrote wire, lethally slicing her throat. A distraught Aubrey retreats to her bedroom, but another intruder in a fox mask kills her with a machete before writing "you're next" in blood on the wall.
Kelly flees the house and goes to Erik's house nearby, where she finds his corpse. Lamb kills her by driving an ax into her head. Crispian leaves the house to look for help. Tiger attacks Erin but she stabs his arm, then crushes his skull with a meat tenderizer.
Paul finds sleeping bags, food wrappers, and bottles of urine in the closet, indicating that the killers have been hiding out in the house for some time. He presents this evidence to Felix and Zee, proclaiming that this was a targeted attack and not a random act of violence. Fox then approaches from behind and slits his throat. Felix and Zee emotionlessly watch him die, before Felix admonishes Fox for having killed his father right in front of him; the murderers are in fact assassins hired by Felix and Zee to murder the family so the two could collect their inheritance. Meanwhile, Lamb finds Tiger's corpse and becomes enraged. He discovers a wounded Drake, but retreats after Erin stabs him with a screwdriver. While setting up nail traps, Erin explains to Zee that she grew up in a survivalist compound, where she learned combat and survival skills. Felix kills a wounded Drake to increase his inheritance by stabbing him with screwdrivers.
Erin jumps through a window to escape Fox, injuring her leg. Lamb is injured by one of her nail traps. Erin overhears an argument between Felix, Zee, Fox, and Lamb, revealing that Lamb and Tiger were brothers. She ambushes Lamb before fatally stabbing him.
Realizing she cannot outrun Fox with a wounded leg, she sets a trap at the front door where an ax would fall and kill anyone who opens it. Fox is undeterred by this trap, but is lured into the basement and killed with a log. Zee and Felix attempt to kill Erin, but she kills Felix by shredding his head with a blender before stabbing Zee in the head with a knife. When Felix's cell phone rings, Erin answers the call without speaking. Believing he is speaking to Felix, Crispian reveals his involvement in the scheme. Erin confronts him when he returns. Crispian explains that she was never meant to be targeted and attempts to bribe her into staying quiet. Disgusted that he would sacrifice his family for money, she kills him by stabbing him in the neck and eye.
A police officer arrives and shoots Erin in the shoulder, having seen her kill Crispian. He enters the house, despite Erin's attempts to dissuade him and falls victim to the axe trap.
Barrett wrote the film after Wingard told him that he wanted to do a home invasion movie, noting that they were the only films that still truly frightened him.[7]
From there, Barrett wrote a script inspired by Agatha Christie mysteries as well as a combination of screwball comedies and chamber mysteries.[7] Barrett would later note that A Bay of Blood was probably in the back of his mind when writing the film, although he only realized this after the fact.[7]
Wingard credited the film's humor to Barrett's sense of humor and cynicism. Some of the dinner conversations were improvised and based on real-life experiences the filmmakers had with family members.[8]
Filming
The film was shot in 2011 at a mansion in Columbia, Missouri. Filming took place over four weeks, and shooting consisted mostly of night shoots filmed from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.[9]
Four days after its premiere, Lionsgate acquired American, British, and Canadian distribution rights to the film for $2 million.[13][14] The film was part of the competition during the 20th edition of the international festival of fantastic movies at Gerardmer (France) in February 2013, and it won the Syfy prize of the event.
Box office
The film opened in the United States on August 9, 2013 and earned $7,020,196 in its opening weekend. The film closed on October 17, having grossed $18,494,006 in the domestic box office and $8,401,475 overseas for a worldwide total of $26,895,481.[15]
Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 80% based on 161 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The site's critical consensus states, "You're Next's energetic and effective mix of brutal gore and pitch black humor will please horror buffs and beyond."[16]Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[17] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[18]
Vanity Fair's Jordan Hoffman called You're Next "one of the more entertaining horror pictures of the last 10 years".[19] Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+, praising "Wingard's canny knack for leavening his characters' gory demises with sick laughs and clever Rube Goldberg twists (razor-sharp piano wire hasn't been used this well since 1999's Audition). It's like Ordinary People meets Scream" and describing the final shot as "deliciously twisted".[20] R. Kurt Osenlund of Slant Magazine gave the film 4 stars, stating that it "brazenly merges the home-invasion thriller with the dysfunctional family dramedy".[21] Joshua Rothkopf (Time Out New York) called the film "solidly satisfying" and a "minor triumph", though adding that it was, in general, unoriginal.[22] Matt Glasby of Total Film called the film "funny and tense, rather than hilarious and terrifying", and complimented it for being a "good" horror-comedy.[23] Barbara VanDenburgh (Arizona Republic) gave the film 3.5 out of 5 stars, stating that it was not "very scary" and that its "budget for red food coloring was no doubt higher than the one for script doctoring"; although she complimented the score and "gruesome" conclusion.[24] Mark Jenkins of The Washington Post said the movie "is at times bloodily entertaining. And if the central plot twist isn't all that clever, at least the movie offers some motivation for its mayhem",[25] while Jane Horwitz wrote for the same newspaper: "For slasher/horror fans 17 and older, You're Next may provide sufficient homicidal entertainment".[26] Liam Lacey (The Globe and Mail) gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, describing it as "well-executed" but "rudimentary".[27]
A review from St. Louis Post-Dispatch called the film unoriginal,[28] while Rene Rodriguez (The Miami Herald) panned the film, calling it "practically insulting", and dubbed the premise "idiotic".[29] John DeFore (The Hollywood Reporter) wrote that the film's characters were mostly unsympathetic and that more humor would have improved the film.[30] Stephen Whitty of The Newark Star-Ledger, in a review for The Portland Oregonian, gave the film a C+ rating, agreeing it was unoriginal and uninventive, comparing it to The Purge and The Last House on the Left.[31] Scott Bowles of USA Today gave You're Next a negative review, describing it as repetitive and stating that it did not have a purpose.[32]
Total Film placed Erin (Sharni Vinson) at number one on their list of "50 Most Bad-Ass Female Horror Leads".[33]Entertainment Weekly placed Erin at number thirteen on its list of "The Best Horror Heroines in Film."[34]
Home media
The film was released via video on demand on December 27, 2013, and via DVD and Blu-ray on January 14, 2014.
^ abcGeddes, Colin. "2011 Films – You're Next". Toronto International Film Festival Inc. Archived from the original on September 24, 2011. Retrieved September 19, 2011.
