When the Davison family got together for their parents’ 35th wedding anniversary, they knew some sort of drama would be on the cards. After all, what family reunions aren’t without a little… excitement? However, during dinner, a group of masked killers descend upon the house, and one by one they set about picking off each and every member of the Davison clan. Well, almost all of them.
You’re Next is one of those films that hadn’t really appealed to me until recently. By now, you guys will know that I’m not exactly a horror fanatic, and because this is billed by a lot of people to be a bit like that, I hadn’t been in a hurry to watch it after being majorly let down by roughly 90% of the horror films I’ve seen. However, in the last few months or so I’ve heard a few people really rave about this film, and seeing as it was on Netflix at the minute, I decided to watch it. I am very pleased I’ve seen it now, because it was really good. Packed full of action and a wonderful heroine, plus something that actually resembled a plot, it was a very pleasant surprise!
Sharni Vinson played the hero of this story. Erin was everything I want all horror characters to be from now on. She was intelligent; she stayed calm when everyone around her was losing their heads, and she could put up a bloody good fight. Words can’t describe how happy I was to find that I was finally watching a film such as this where the lead had a brain.
Inevitably, there were more idiotic characters to be found here, but they helped to highlight how this film got things right. It took the characters that had straw where their brains should have been and killed them off first. This was a film with horror elements that got the idea of natural selection spot on. Charles Darwin would honestly be so proud of the filmmakers here, as am I.
There was so much creativity used in this film too. I’ve discovered so many different ways in which I can now arm myself in the event of a home invasion in my own house, and some of them were hugely ingenious. I mean, I’d never seen someone get their head blended before seeing this, but now I have, and I must say my eyes have been opened. The various different ways people got killed or injured in the film meant the action could be stretched out across more or less the whole film, and this made for a packed 90 minutes. It was absolutely brilliant!
However, I wouldn’t say that this has ignited a love for horror films with me. I personally wouldn’t class this as a horror film. There were elements, I am not disputing that, but this was definitely more of a thriller than anything else. The only reason I would say this got handed some horror status was because of the amount of blood that was spilled in it, which is fine, but for me I need more than that before I can start throwing the H word around. Still, that shouldn’t take away from how good this film was. I was probably just being nit-picky.
I would definitely recommend You’re Next if you hadn’t already gathered that much. This is basically what The Purge tried to be but ended up failing miserably as. There are so many plus points for this film, and I could go on for hours more about the finer details. The bottom line it this was a fun, action-packed violent thriller with a brilliant lead character who shames so many others who came before her. I absolutely loved it!
