I have gone into many slasher films over three decades and more dumbfounded repeatedly by victim(s) written without even a basic ability to fight back against the masked men running amok with machete and hunting knife. A hard coded rule of the slasher film adhered to by numerous outings: the more a protagonist fights back, the worse he or she suffers until their eventual death. Thus my interest in a slasher feature billed as one where the least likely victim not only fights back, but wins.
Another recent film in the genre failed its promise to deliver the same ('No One Lives').
Speaking to character, a writer must walk a fine line to deliver a protagonist from victimized to bloodied victory without painting her as more vicious than the killer(s). Normally this is done in sequences best described as trials by or under fire through the survival of which the heroine grows her courage and combat skills. It is a primal story theme powerful as it is poignant in its ability to connect an audience with the character, and develop her in a maelstrom before their very eyes.
In 'You're Next' the heroine Erin (Sharni Vinson) comes prepackaged a bad-ass, despite her portrayal as a meek tag along until her instant transformation when the killing starts. Erin is the sole strong character among ten others, so mentally and physically more competent than everyone else, she alone knows how to drive a nail through wood or kick a man in that place.
There is no gradual turnover in Erin, nor does she begin weak and grow stronger through negotiation of the increasingly difficult problems she faces as a small band of masked killers slaughter their way through her boyfriend's sizable family. She instantly becomes a ninety pound engine of destruction which only revs higher the longer she is threatened. I much prefer a character who must dig deep into inner strength she was unaware she had in the first place.
Regarding the rest, the premise of the film has potential for high entertainment value but its makers squandered it in their painfully obvious by the numbers execution likely a consequence of bad writing and directing.
The screenplay fails to flesh out the other nine characters who are not Erin which is a shame as it does briefly ignite friction between two of three brothers in an argument at family dinner. Here must be drawn a comparison between slasher films of the seventies and eighties and the lot currently trending.
The ensemble slasher movie is three decades old and more, surely then a concept rife with examples from which to draw buckets of fresh blood. Where genre films of that bygone era often painted skillfully interesting depth even into characters killed within minutes of their opening acts, pictures such as 'You're Next' shape most of their supporting cast as cardboard cutouts lacking the ability to think or act at the slightest sign of trouble. In the case of the film in question: "Who are the members of this zany wooden family, and why should we care if they die?"
This film comes packing a couple of twists although they are divergent from the light in which its masked killers are first painted and the wooden, lifeless responses of family members to the deaths of their loved ones telegraph plainly what the reveals will be, that or forces you to believe the acting and writing are worse than you imagined believable.
The masked killers themselves are uninteresting and of the variety you've seen many times before, slasher fan or not. They wear bright white animal faces and black tactical gear. Do they want to blend into the night, or not? They carry the most unwieldy of mêlée weapons and use crossbows despite the remote location of their targets. And they paint blood graffiti on the walls of their victims' homes hinting at their sadistic nature, yet the death of one of their own proves them just as emotionally human as anyone else.
The rest is beat after beat of nonsensical supporting character behavior and senseless repetition. The bad guys kill the neighbors two minutes into act one yet the script returns us two more times to their house where a highly annoying song is playing on repeat, you've been warned. A killer peers over a window sill, sees a trap laid there by our heroine, and then steps on it anyway. A victim runs slow motion into a metal wire hung at Adam's apple height. What if her much taller brother had come out first? The heroine rigs a lethal trap at the front door, but the bad guys keep using the window beside it to get in. Long after a killer slays someone inside an upstairs bedroom, another character says "I think it's safe to assume one of them is inside." Much in the same vein follows.
Viewer response thus far to 'You're Next' has astonished me. That or there's hidden quality I am missing in films such as this.
This is an ensemble home invasion slasher film. It's often funny - at the writer's expense - and although it promises to break genre standards, offers up implausibility on high in its heroine's back story as the child of survivalists. Its greatest mistake: she is more psychopathic than the killers themselves who look like they've escaped from the sets of other movies from a few years back. I suppose they grew tired of 'The Strangers' and then were 'Purge'(ed}.
Fans of supernatural horror need not enter - nor most horror movie buffs past their thirty-fifth year.
Minus nine for killers wearing animals masks, plus one for Ti West, minus one for his death, and plus none for the sequel to Crocodile Dundee starring his daughter ... the damsel who kicks ass.
Another recent film in the genre failed its promise to deliver the same ('No One Lives').
Speaking to character, a writer must walk a fine line to deliver a protagonist from victimized to bloodied victory without painting her as more vicious than the killer(s). Normally this is done in sequences best described as trials by or under fire through the survival of which the heroine grows her courage and combat skills. It is a primal story theme powerful as it is poignant in its ability to connect an audience with the character, and develop her in a maelstrom before their very eyes.
In 'You're Next' the heroine Erin (Sharni Vinson) comes prepackaged a bad-ass, despite her portrayal as a meek tag along until her instant transformation when the killing starts. Erin is the sole strong character among ten others, so mentally and physically more competent than everyone else, she alone knows how to drive a nail through wood or kick a man in that place.
There is no gradual turnover in Erin, nor does she begin weak and grow stronger through negotiation of the increasingly difficult problems she faces as a small band of masked killers slaughter their way through her boyfriend's sizable family. She instantly becomes a ninety pound engine of destruction which only revs higher the longer she is threatened. I much prefer a character who must dig deep into inner strength she was unaware she had in the first place.
Regarding the rest, the premise of the film has potential for high entertainment value but its makers squandered it in their painfully obvious by the numbers execution likely a consequence of bad writing and directing.
The screenplay fails to flesh out the other nine characters who are not Erin which is a shame as it does briefly ignite friction between two of three brothers in an argument at family dinner. Here must be drawn a comparison between slasher films of the seventies and eighties and the lot currently trending.
The ensemble slasher movie is three decades old and more, surely then a concept rife with examples from which to draw buckets of fresh blood. Where genre films of that bygone era often painted skillfully interesting depth even into characters killed within minutes of their opening acts, pictures such as 'You're Next' shape most of their supporting cast as cardboard cutouts lacking the ability to think or act at the slightest sign of trouble. In the case of the film in question: "Who are the members of this zany wooden family, and why should we care if they die?"
This film comes packing a couple of twists although they are divergent from the light in which its masked killers are first painted and the wooden, lifeless responses of family members to the deaths of their loved ones telegraph plainly what the reveals will be, that or forces you to believe the acting and writing are worse than you imagined believable.
The masked killers themselves are uninteresting and of the variety you've seen many times before, slasher fan or not. They wear bright white animal faces and black tactical gear. Do they want to blend into the night, or not? They carry the most unwieldy of mêlée weapons and use crossbows despite the remote location of their targets. And they paint blood graffiti on the walls of their victims' homes hinting at their sadistic nature, yet the death of one of their own proves them just as emotionally human as anyone else.
The rest is beat after beat of nonsensical supporting character behavior and senseless repetition. The bad guys kill the neighbors two minutes into act one yet the script returns us two more times to their house where a highly annoying song is playing on repeat, you've been warned. A killer peers over a window sill, sees a trap laid there by our heroine, and then steps on it anyway. A victim runs slow motion into a metal wire hung at Adam's apple height. What if her much taller brother had come out first? The heroine rigs a lethal trap at the front door, but the bad guys keep using the window beside it to get in. Long after a killer slays someone inside an upstairs bedroom, another character says "I think it's safe to assume one of them is inside." Much in the same vein follows.
Viewer response thus far to 'You're Next' has astonished me. That or there's hidden quality I am missing in films such as this.
This is an ensemble home invasion slasher film. It's often funny - at the writer's expense - and although it promises to break genre standards, offers up implausibility on high in its heroine's back story as the child of survivalists. Its greatest mistake: she is more psychopathic than the killers themselves who look like they've escaped from the sets of other movies from a few years back. I suppose they grew tired of 'The Strangers' and then were 'Purge'(ed}.
Fans of supernatural horror need not enter - nor most horror movie buffs past their thirty-fifth year.
Minus nine for killers wearing animals masks, plus one for Ti West, minus one for his death, and plus none for the sequel to Crocodile Dundee starring his daughter ... the damsel who kicks ass.