You're Next - Review

Director: Adam Wingard Writer: Simon Barrett Studios: Lionsgate, Snoot Entertainment Cast: Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Barbara Crampton, Rob Moran Release Date (UK): 28 August 2013 Certificate: 18 Runtime: 95 min

Home-invasion horror “You’re Next,” from “V/H/S/” and “V/H/S/2” contributors Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, may well be one of the most consistently surprising movies of 2013. You may have seen the trailers and TV spots for the movie, which feature familiar footage of teens being chased around a big house by masked maniacs — typical slasher movie fare, it seems, and the film keeps up this appearance for about its first half or so. But in its second half, when the hacking and slashing really kicks into gear, the film switches gears and transforms into something else: a Friday-night fright flick which is creative, subversive, refreshingly unpredictable and, most surprisingly of all, genuinely, wickedly funny.

The setting, immediately ominous, is a remote country house by the woods, and the victims are a wealthy family reunited for mum and dad’s wedding anniversary. When darkness falls, they are attacked by a gang of mysterious, animal-masked killers armed with an arsenal of crossbows, machetes and razor-sharp wire. Family members are graphically butchered one-by-one in an all manner of gruesome ways, with the words “You’re Next” menacingly scrawled in blood on the bedroom wall. But what the gang of killers don’t anticipate is that one member of this group of seemingly helpless victims is a trained survivalist who’ll give their stalk-n-slash methods a run for their money.

There are plot-centric shocks along the way, with mounting revelations indicating that not all is as straightforward as it seems, but most surprising is the film’s unexpected shift in tone, as it slowly but surely gains the playful, self-mocking sense of humour of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s “Scream” franchise. What starts off as a tense but generic slasher flick twists itself into a darkly comic thriller in which the killers haplessly fall victim to “Home Alone”-style booby-traps and in which blood-soaked character deaths are played for laughs. The film maintains its horror routes throughout, but audiences may be shocked to find themselves laughing just as much as they’re screaming and squirming.

For horror hounds, the film is appropriately gruesome, with gallons of blood spurting and spraying, and there’s a groovy synth soundtrack which calls to mind the old-school scores of “Halloween" helmer John Carpenter. The film’s stand-out is Australian actress Sharni Vinson, who’s an absolute badass as our butt-kicking, table-turning heroine — she’s not so much cowering babysitter Laurie Strode as she is an Aussie Rambo. The scares, though effective, aren’t particularly original and that wicked sense of humour could have come in handy in the film’s opening third, but it’s great to see a slasher-horror which feels this fresh, is this difficult to predict and is this much of a blast to watch.

Rating: 8/10