Susan Granger’s review of “You’re Next” (Snoot Entertainment)
What happens when filmmakers combine a dysfunctional family reunion with the random violence of a home invasion thriller? You get a gory, late-summer slasher, and this one is not too bad.
It’s lucky that Erin (Sharni Vinson from “Step Up 3D”), a resourceful teaching assistant, was raised
in a survivalist compound in the Australian Outback because she’s about to meet her boyfriend/former professor Crispian’s (A.J. Bowen from “The Signal”) squabbling family and significant others as they gather to celebrate his parents’ 35th wedding anniversary at their posh, English Tudor-style manor house. After a shocking prologue that introduces the masked intruders, the Davisons’ isolated country estate is suddenly invaded by unknown attackers who are wearing weird animal masks and wielding crossbows. What Crispian’s mother Aubrey (Barbara Crampton from “Re-Animator”), father Paul (Rob Moran from “Hall Pass”), sister Aimee (Amy Seimetz from “Upstream Color”) and feuding brothers Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and Drake (Joe Swanberg, who directed “Drinking Buddies”) don’t realize is that their neighbors (Larry Fessenden, Kate Lyn Shiel) have been slaughtered…and, according to the writing in blood on the wall, they’re next on the siege slate. As time passes, the body count mounts.
Screenwriter/producer Simon Barrett (“Dead Birds”), director/editor Adam Wingard (“A Horrible Way to Die,” “V/H/S”) and cinematographer Andrew Palermo (“V/H/S”) keep the satirical shocks
coming, playing much of the inherent creepiness for laughs, although the one-by-one elimination “And Then There Were None” plot is utterly predictable.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “You’re Next” is a fright flick 5, filled with pointless
carnage.
