You’re Next
Director: Adam Wingard
Writer: Simon Barrett
Cast: Sharni Vinson, AJ Bowen, Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, Joe Swanberg, Margaret Laney, Amy Seimetz, Ti West, Rob Moran, Barbara Crampton
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
It’s been a while since the Davison family came together but they do so to celebrate the parents’ anniversary. It’s Crispian’s (AJ Bowen) opportunity to introduce his new girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson). But as they sit together and go through the usual tense “we don’t much like each other but we are family” routine, they come under attack from men in masks who set out to kill them one by one.

You’re Next comes with a lot of accolades to back it up and I have to say that I do believe it’s been severely overhyped. Maybe I would have liked it if my expectations hadn’t been so high, but in this case I left it with a decided feeling of meh.

I don’t mean to say that it’s all bad. You’re Next is a decent film. The pacing is excellent and I wasn’t once bored during the movie, even if I knew exactly what was going to happen. But part of my problem was that it was mostly absolutely obvious what was going to happen. Just once the film managed to keep me on my toes by acknowledging that they were being obvious and playing around with that for a bit.

If I had heard less about the film in advance, that alone would probably have been enough for me to praise it as well, especially in addition to the tense atmosphere it manages to create most of the time.

But even putting my expectation out of play, the movie is not problem-free. There’s the whole “forseeable but trying to surprise” thing and that it felt utterly familiar. There’s the fact that Erin – who we were supposed to root for – has no personality whatsoever, apart from “kick ass”. (There’s also the thing that Barbara Crampton looked so young I didn’t believe she could be the mother of four grown children, though if I look at her date of birth I can see that it’s entirely possible. Respect for staying young, but in this case my suspension of disbelief suffered.)

It did end up being entertaining. But I don’t think that I’ll be watching it again any time soon.

Summarizing: It’s okay.