You're Next

A slasher fest is where a group of people go to an isolated, creepy location and get killed one by one in a variety of gory ways. The audience gets to be shocked by the sudden appearances of the killer (out of the dark, through the window, from behind the victim, when the victim goes through a door, when the victim is sans clothes, etc.) They get to enjoy the gore, and to speculate on who will be the next victim and which characters will survive to the final credits.

When I get the New Zealand International Film Festival program one of the first things I do is flip to the back to checkout Ant Timpson's Incredibly Strange section. This is a mix of horror films and other odd ball films that don't fit in other sections. This year the Incredibly Strange section included Blue Ruin which is a perfectly respectable small thriller that feels like it was miss filed and should have been in the same section as The East. You're Next on the other hand is typical Ant Timpson material.

You're Next is a slasher fest which starts with the first two victims being killed during the opening credits and before the main group begins to arrive for a family re-union at the big old house down the road.

The general air of doom seems misplaced as the family get down to sniping and bitching. But we know the calm won't last, and the next death is a relief from unpleasantness of the passive-aggressive brotherly feuding. At 10 people the group is unusually large for a slasher film, and you wonder if they will run out of imaginative ways to kill them off. But we are in safe hands and the typical suicidal strategies take over.

There are plenty of shocks both sudden and bloody, interspersed with plenty of laughs and at least four good plot twists. Be warned that there is no shortage of gore as a wide variety of household objects are put to use beyond their manufacturer's specifications.

Trailer

Ian's rating 4/5