Review: You’re Next (2013)

When it comes to psychopathic murderers, having them tell you “you’re next” is a very bad thing. Whatever they have planned for you rarely involves petting puppies, but it’s hard to GTFO when these same psychos have booby-trapped your escape route. What to do, what to do.

In You’re Next, The Davidson family has to come up with their own plan to GTFO quickly when they’re faced with the same situation. A group of bloodthirsty sadists have surrounded their house and begun shooting arrows through the windows. They’ve also booby-trapped the exits and disabled the cars making an escape nearly impossible. Why are they doing all this? How many of them are there? Where are they? Who will be next?

You’re Next is SURPRISINGLY good at answering all those questions. In fact, the film, as a whole, is surprisingly good. I went in with few expectations, not knowing much about the story other than it being about a family trapped in a house while under attack from psychos. At first glance, you might think it’s one of those horrible, predictable films where baddies kill everyone except one girl, and then she decides to fight for survival. That’s only partly true. There are twists and turns that, if you don’t read the IMDB description, you won’t see coming- so don’t read it. Go in blind, although, even if you do read it, it doesn’t spoil all the twists so you’re still okay.

If you haven’t seen the film, I recommend stopping here. Go see the film before reading on unless you really don’t care about Spoilers.

Beware spoilers below!

You’re Next stunned the hell out of me when the heroine, Erin (Sharni Vinson), morphed into survival mode immediately. All too often do the horror heroines scream, shake, and act foolishly before saying “enough” and facing their foes. And that is probably normal real life behavior, but they shouldn’t all do that in films. It’s pretend, you can have your character do whatever the hell you want them to do, and sometimes it’s nice to see some baddies mess with the wrong person and get their asses utterly handed to them- which is the case with You’re Next. Here Erin fights back with a vengeance and shows no mercy for her foes from the very first moment an arrow hits flesh.

She doesn’t just go toe-to-toe with them and beat them with her brawn. She outsmarts them. It’s refreshing to see a character use their brain and skills… and the occasional meat tenderizer. She’s not just some superhuman chick, though. The writer, Simon Barrett made sure to give logical reasons behind her Rambo-esque mettle and skillset, which is a little tidbit that helps give the film extra oomph.

Other than the great female protagonist, the film followed a pretty well worn path, but it’s enjoyable, still produces several jump scares, and gets pretty gory. You’re Next is a shiny gem in the mud-and-blood-caked horror genre.

Best Line: “Why the f*** not?”

Best Kill: Erin fights a baddie in the kitchen. She grabs a blender and smacks him in the face with it. Then, once the glass container on top is no longer in the way, she turns the blender upside down, shoving the blades into the top of the baddie’s head! As if that’s not implausible enough, she plugs in the blender (which is, let’s face it, what the audience is all rooting for anyways), turns it on, and blends his grey matter into a very fine smoothie.

Action Rating: 3 Brain Smoothies, out of 5!

This is the Action Flick Chick, and you’ve just been kicked in the ass!