You're Next: YEAH, YOU

It's horror season! A brief, 2 months-ish window between the block busters and the holiday Oscar grabs where things get real gory at the box office, and I love it. I've talked before here about how and why it's difficult to do horror well, but seriously, I don't care. I just want ghosts and severed limbs and hot ladies running through the woods all up in this bitch. 

And goats when applicable.

You're Next is 2013's first offering in this department (summer horror doesn't count, and no this isn't summer horror even though it came out in August. IT'S MY BLOG; I MAKE THE RULES). It's a great time, if you're into this kinda thing. You're Next is to horror what Brick and Drive  were to film noir, which is to say a movie that is at once a send-up and homage to the genre. It's scares come with a wink and nudge, and it's a lot more fun if you get the joke. 

The plot is as baseline as it gets. A wealthy family goes to their nice house in the sticks, mysterious thugs in animal masks show up to murderize them, family must *survive the night* (BABY SPOILER: Many do not). It's The Strangers, minus Arwen Evenstar. 

Where You're Next walks a tight-rope is bringing the audience in on the joke without letting the characters in, too. There's more than self-awareness here; self-aware has been done before in horror. This is a comedy for horror fans who want to remember the highlights (nods to The Shining and the scariest scene from the Saw series) and low lights (see: all of The Strangers) of the genre they love, all wrapped in a skin of more than decent slasher horror. It's sloppy in spots; this is a hard act to nail without a stumble, but there's more good than bad. The twist works, there's more than a few decent kills, and you get some awesomely WASP-y names for the characters, like "Crispian" and "Drake". 

WASP

You're Next is impressive, but it's probably not for everyone. It's heavy on certain brands of wish fulfilment (ass-kicking survival; watching rich white people get murderized), but at the end of the day, it's a movie by film geeks for film geeks. If you don't put yourself in that category, you might not dig it. If, on the other hand, you think you think watching a murdering sociopath take a meat tenderizer to the crotch sounds rad, this movie is for you. It was certainly for me.

Come Get Some

Directed By: Adam Wingard 

Starring: Sharni Vinson (She was in Blue Crush 2, which apparently exists!), a bunch of other people no one's heard of but all did a pretty good job! Check out the movie's main IMDB page for more facts on 'em.

You Should see it if: You love horror, or spend your days nursing revenge fantasies.