By: debbie lynn elias
It’s gonna be tough to top the surprise elements and “cool factor” of YOU’RE NEXT. Not only filled with killers who are grammatically correct, YOU’RE NEXT is scary, jump out of your seat fun. For any horror afficionados, all one needs is to see the names Larry Fessenden, Ti West and Joe Swanberg as cast plus the genius of Adam Wingard at the helm and script by Simon Barrett, and you know you’re in for something smartly conceived and executed. Then toss in a “killer” action-packed performance by Aussie Sharni Vinson, a dark, historic mansion and animal-masked killers and what’s not to love! Complete with murder, madness, mayhem and greed and YOU’RE NEXT is simply “Frighteningly Awesome”!!
A family more dysfunctional than mine, the Davisons reunite for Mom and Dad’s 25th anniversary at the million dollar family manse hidden away on a wooded multi-acre estate far from the maddening crowds. Dad has recently retired from an executive position with an high-powered and politically connected defense contractor, much to the distress of son Crispian’s girlfriend Erin who is meeting the family for the first time. Joining in the festivities are son Drake and his prestige-hungry wife Kelly, spoiled youngest child Aimee and her filmmaker boyfriend Tariq, and the obvious black sheep of the family, Felix and his goth girl, Zee. From the get-go it’s clear that none of the siblings get along – at all.
It doesn’t take long before the family sits down for their first big familial dinner and blood starts spurting and bodies start dropping as unseen sounds, shadows and mystery cross-bow arrows start plaguing the family. Panic ensues in all but Erin who calls on her skills growing up as a survivalist in the Australian Outback to close ranks and try and save as many lives as possible. In the meantime, Crispian, the wimpiest of the group, bravely volunteers to run across the woods to a neighbor to call for help. And ever so slowly and deliberately, with each onslaught, the attackers become more visible showing their true selves, covered in animal masks. Foxes, lambs, wolves – all metaphoric covers for well worn cliches.
Sharni Vinson gets my vote as the next horror protagonist. As Erin she is not only kick-ass, but delivers a more than convincing intelligence and survivalist attitude. And she’s likeable – the ONLY likeable one in the bunch! For Vinson, the great appeal of YOU’RE NEXT and the character was Erin’s intelligence finding it “not so much the physicality of the role which I feel like unknowingly I trained for, for 30 years of my life in just the sports that I’ve come through, but it was more the mentality of the character. She is smart and she has this, what I almost took as a sixth sense, so to speak. She’s the first person to hear a glass break and notice it and react. And her reaction time is quick. I had to give her the respect that somebody coming from a survivalist upbringing would have in dealing with these situations.”
A standout for Vinson is that “these characters that are just, gritty. Really gritty. I would step into hair and make-up. And you’re used to stepping into a hair and make-up chair and walking out and you look in the mirror and go, ‘Is my make-up perfect?’ You don’t care with this. This is like, you sit in there and say, ‘Mess me up as bad as you can. Make me look as really bloody and gory as whatever this character has been through is possible.’ And then I look in the mirror and see all the scratches! I’ve never felt cooler! And more in line with the character with war wounds. You’re not worried about, ‘What do I look like right now?’ It’s not about that. It’s about how am I going to get this moment across and make it the most believable for the audience to then respond to it. The whole movie was coming from a different place so hopefully that comes across.”
Wendy Glenn and Nic Tucci add a nice layer of slick suspicion as Zee and Felix, respectively, something that proved an added bonus for Sharni Vinson given that Glenn is her best friend and roommate off-screen. Describing Glenn’s performance of Zee as “geniusly played”, Vinson is quick to note that “She’s nothing like that role. [Wendy] is an English girl who’s just super, super sweet. . .She’s just such a good actress .”
A familiar face to indie fans is writer/director/actor Joe Swanberg who is just a lot of fun as the pompous brother Drake. Making Drake unlikeable, then cocky, then arrogant, and then turn him into a martyred stumbler when Drake is shot with a crossbow and has an arrow sticking out of his back. Swanberg makes Drake the guy that you just want to slap upside the head and say, “Buck up, Man!” Relishing the experience, Swanberg reflects, “Believe me, I’m very proud and excited to have anything to do with YOU’RE NEXT. It’s a great role to play. When they sent me the script I was immediately very excited.”
As Crispian, AJ Bowen dives into the performance had first, making Crispian an annoying schmuck from the start. My radar was immediately up from the very beginning where this character is concerned with Bowen milking the role for all the uneasiness possible, making Crispian itchy and squirmy with every movement.
The other girls in the cast really aren’t good for much other than screaming and they do a great job of it. Director Wingard also makes them so unlikeable you don’t care that they die. He sticks to the formula of killing off the unlikeable characters. However, I am personally disappointed though at the death of Ti West’s Tariq who adds a great bit of tongue-in-cheek playing a filmmaker version of himself.
Simon Barrett’s script sets up many plot possibilities that intentionally divert the mind, e.g., as Crispian and Erin are driving to the house, he lets it slip out that his father just retired from a huge defense firm. Immediately, you think this is important as it’s so non sequitur in the conversation. When bad things start happening, Erin is the first suspect that comes to mind. But as other family members start showing up, the familial plot thickens and although a “genre film”, there is depth to the performances with establishing the familial fracture through facial expressions, vocal inflection and tone and body stances that beyond typical “phone it in” performance tropes. But through it all, the only character that you really develop a like and rah-rah attitude for is that of Erin – despite an initial scripting deflection. Holding out for the last possible moment for the story’s big “reveal” goes to the film’s strength and then while the audience is believing there’s some big plot at play for “the greater good” perhaps, images appear that spin the mind 180 degrees into another direction with more twists that just ratchet up the fear factor and blood-letting.
Adam Wingard amps up the suspense and the scares while amping up the body count. Free-flowing blood spews forth with as much venom as the hate-filled greedy siblings. I am agog with Andrew Palermo’s cinematography as well as Thomas Hammock’s production design. With the production design, the house is steeped in an emotional coldness while still feeling dark and claustrophobic. Little details, like a Kelvinator refrigerator in the kitchen, the old crystal cut doorknobs but with painting that has painted over the locks and door jambs, belie the “monied” family which allows for the possibility at film’s end, a final “**** you” to the killers looking for money, i.e., dad really doesn’t have any. Or does he? Nothing is ever as it seems with Wingard and Barrett as puppetmasters extraordinaire.
Nice choice by Wingard to present the killers at first as unseen sounds and faint glimmers or shadowy reflections and as bodies drop, increase the intensity and recognition of the killers. What really kills is the sound design and scoring, especially in the first scenes with Fessenden where we get a bright light outside his home (at that moment we don’t know the lights are on motion sensors) and a pulsating outer-space/alien type score. Are aliens attacking? Is this the supernatural? Wingard throws you off balance as to who or what is about to appear.
An interesting perspective on Wingard’s direction of YOU’RE NEXT comes from fellow director and one of the cast here, Joe Swanberg. “The experience of being on the set of YOU’RE NEXT and watching Adam [Wingard] who I met when he was flat broke, who was probably flat broke the day they started shooting YOU”RE NEXT, too [laughing] – this is a guy who slept on my couch for a month while we made three microbudget movies in a row. . .To get to Columbia, Missouri and see this guy commanding a ship of a crew of 30 and tons of effects and two cameras and all this stuff. It was inspiring. I’m not often inspired by my close friends in that way. . .It was amazing to get there and really see Adam step up to that level and work his ass off and then to come into the editing room and just focus and get that cut ready for Toronto. I just saw a guy who is prone to being a sort of stoner-slacker kind of dude, I saw him really like a laser, just hone in on this movie and he made a great movie.”
And having the killers wear animal masks?? Brilliant! The first thing one thinks of with the sheep mask is “Wolf in sheep’s clothing”, with the fox, “fox in the hen house”, etc. Nice little touches that take YOU’RE NEXT beyond a slasher film and give it levels of intelligent thought and construct.
Kills methods are wonderfully executed and varied. Machetes, crossbows, slit throats, piano wire (and check out that great piano pinging when Aimee runs into the piano wire!!). Perfectly delicious! And at the same time, we see basic survival weapons come into play – nails in boards, kitchen knives, meat cleavers, meat pounders, bricks, string. Great balance of the calculated methodology versus think on your feet survival.
An important aspect of YOU’RE NEXT is the house in which the film is shot. A character itself, as Vinson noted, “The house was picked for the film because it is so visually appeasing for what we were after. It really was that creaky. It really was that scary just to see it. I think that one of the crazy things was that when we were shooting, especially the big crazy dinner table scene where we’re utilizing 12 cast members and it’s mayhem.” But shooting in this “visually appeasing house” presented its own challenges given that the house is an historic landmark in Missouri. In order to protect the construction, false walls had to be built and great care had to be given to floors, furnishings, lighting fixtures. Excitedly recalling the mayhem of the shoot, Vinson reflects, “The table even gets flipped on its head at one point. And we’re not supposed to ruin the floors! How are we gonna do this? You’ve got one chance, one take. Once this is down, we’re not gonna re-set it. A lot of our shots in this movie were shot in the first and second take. That’s what you’re seeing. It’s very raw. We had to be very very mindful of the carpet. It just remember the ‘Don’t get blood on the carpet! Don’t get blood on the carpet!’ And I’m like, ‘How are we not? There’s a blood rig up my neck and my head’s about to explode!’ In the original ending, I die, so there’s this huge blood rig where my head exploded. So, how are we not gonna get blood on the carpet? I don’t know how much money they owed in the end in damages, but it was probably worth it! [laughing] It was! It was worth it. “
Hell! I wanna be next in line to see YOU’RE NEXT again!!! It’s bloody wonderful!
Directed by Adam Wingard
Written by Simon Barrett
Cast: Sharni Vinson, Joe Swanberg, Ti West, Wendy Glenn, Nic Tucci, AJ Bowen, Larry Fessenden
