1 Time Film Excess Nominee:
Best Editing: Adam Wingard (lost to The Artist)
+ Best Horror Movie of the Year
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| A blurry, eerie poster for Adam Wingard's You're Next |
An aging, affluent married couple's many children and their partners are invited to their remote mansion, - but someone has murdered the neighbors next door, and now the quarreling family are terrorized and violently attacked!
You're Next is the 6th film from great Tennessean filmmaker Adam Wingard (Autoerotic (2011)), written by Simon Barrett (Blair Witch (2016)).
You're Next has cool photography (by Andrew Droz Palermo (A Ghost Story (2017))) and effective editing (also by Wingard.) It is a smartly conceptualized slasher horror comedy with high pace, surprise twists and a through-going, neat unpredictability. It is made by people who obviously have fun with the genre, - and who also manage to make audiences have fun with their creation (and its brutal, more or less scary shenanigans.)
The point to You're Next may be that if you have a half-crappy family that's plagued by internal hatred, - you simply shouldn't bring them together.
SPOILER The film's Australian heroine Sharni Vinson (Bait (2012)) is super-cool in You're Next, (so is her creative - vicious - use of a blender!), and all of her co-stars seem totally game and capable here, too. You're Next is an extremely well-running, surprisingly solid and well-made movie. SPOILER The only thing in the plot that isn't really resolved is: why do the neighbors have to die? (As insurance against alarm, I guess.) The only questionable element, then, is the hunters writing 'you're next' in blood for their next victim, which is quite odd, if you try to make sense of it, but is also forgivable as the film's own frivolous invention, its quirk, its pizzazz.
The score, made by Mads Heldtberg (Teenage Cocktail (2016)), Jasper Lee (The Nobodies (2017)), Kyle McKinnon (Pop Skull (2007)) and Wingard, recalls John Carpenter scores, while plot elements share similarities with Night of the Living Dead (1968), Home Alone (1990) and more films.
You're Next clearly ranks among the year's best horror films and works both as a generational satire and a slasher-smelling blood bath.
Related post:
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
Wingard gives an interview about the film here
Cost: 1 mil. $
Box office: 26.8 mil. $
= Mega-hit
[You're Next premiered 10 September (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 94 minutes. The script came about due to Wingard's wish to make a home invasion movie, and was written with inspiration from Agatha Christie mysteries, screwball comedies and Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971). Shooting took place in Missouri for 4 weeks in March 2011, mostly in and around an antique home that had been standing empty for 12 years. Lionsgate bought the North-American and UK distribution rights for just 2 mil. $. The film opened and peaked at #6 to a 7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it grossed 18.4 mil. $ (68.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 1.8 mil. $ (6.7 %) and Spain with 1.2 mil. $ (4.5 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 1.5/4 star review, very much opposite to this review and in-line with his poor appreciation and understanding of the horror genre in general. Wingard at the moment is announced to direct South-Korean movie remake I Saw the Devil as well as the coming, major tentpole movie Godzilla vs. Kong (2020). You're Next is certified fresh at 75 % with a 6.5/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of You're Next?
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