By Rhiannon Saegert/managing editor
You’re Next tries to be part straight horror, part parody, and part snarky, hyper self-aware genre subversion.
Unfortunately, it stretches itself way too thin, doesn’t know whether it should be serious or funny and misses all three marks for most of its runtime. There’s a lot of potential, but too many dull moments and a wildly fluctuating tone hold it back.
In the first part, four siblings and their significant others meet at their parents’ house to celebrate their anniversary. After poorly acting their way through a litany of horror movie cliches for 20 minutes, the family is attacked by three menacing figures in creepy white masks.
Then it goes into completely ridiculous parody.
Characters do things no sane person would ever do, petty arguments from earlier in the film continue while people drop like flies and no one ever stops screaming. It’s every complaint anyone ever had about a horror film, except magnified and done deliberately.
It’s unfortunate that every other character is either a cardboard cutout or completely interchangeable because the last third is really the strongest and the most enjoyable.
If spoilers are a concern, stop reading here because this movie really hinges on just one joke: It turns out the middle brother’s girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson) is more lethal than the bad guys.
Erin isn’t simply a Final Girl in the tradition of slasher flicks. She is the ultimate Final Girl, the final Final Girl. She’s a survivalist, and her improvised booby traps and weapons make Nancy from the first A Nightmare on Elm Street film look like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. She’s tough, she’s likeable, she’s human and she’s the best thing in the entire movie.
Once the movie is done trying to scare the audience or impress them by picking apart its own genre, things improve immensely.
Erin, no longer forced into the background, gets to take center stage and starts mopping the floor with the masked men, with an awesome synth score playing during her scenes as if she were the killer.
Her character is the only successful twist on an old stock character the movie manages to pull off. She doesn’t just run away, she plays off her attackers’ expectations and begins hunting them.
It’s probably no accident several of the most gruesome, creative kills involve kitchen appliances. Tell Erin to stay in the kitchen, and it may not end well for you.
