Nowadays you may (or may not) know Adam Wingard for his reboots of Japanese properties like Godzilla and Death Note, and the American property Blair Witch. But back in 2011 you’d have to be a hardcore horror/indie film nerd to have heard of him at all, until he broke through with this good-looking, bad-humoured riff on the home invasion.
There’s very little human interest in the seminal home-invasion films: Ils, The Strangers, The Purge. They really just exist to scream a lot and to suffer. Now, the characters here scream and suffer a lot too, but it’s mostly because of the twisted dynamics of a large, rich, thoroughly awful family. And all of a sudden things go from bad to worse as indie horror director Ti West (now best known for the X/Pearl/MaXXXine trilogy) takes a crossbow bolt out of nowhere, which has never been great for any family dynamic.
This focus on family – including various partners – gives You’re Next a USP in a genre usually focused on a small unit – a couple, a nuclear family – under siege. It also allows the film a sense of pace and chaos, its high body count substituting for the extended torture sequences seen elsewhere in the genre. And it’s a curiosity in horror that kills are funny; torture isn’t. And this film is very funny.
It seems to be a constant with Wingard’s films that it’s not entirely clear what level he’s pitching at. When are we meant to be laughing? This is deployed to best effect in his magnum opus The Guest, which is an inversion of Drive just as much as You’re Next inverts The Strangers.
Incidentally, The Strangers also releases today from Second Sight – the review is up, here – and so you’re naturally invited to seek out both for a double-bill, though it isn’t hard to work out which one has aged better today, around 15 years later.
Among the extras are two commentaries; an archival one with director Wingard, writer Barrett and actors Sharni Vinson and Barbara Crampton; and a brand new one with just Wingard and Barrett. The newer one doesn’t really add much to our understanding of the film, but there’s a clear camaraderie in both commentaries that makes them pleasant if inessential viewing/listening. The two are good friends, and also appear together in the interview “Children of the 80s”. Elsewhere, there are interviews “The Most of Us”, with producers Keith Calder and Jess Wu Calder; “Script as a Blueprint”, with actor AJ Bowen, “Down in the Basement” with actor Joe Swanberg, and “Be Funny and Die”, with actor Amy Seimetz, who brings a special charm and insight to her interview, but inevitably, there are overlaps between all of these special features, the film emerging as, in fact, a good-humoured but uneventful shoot. The best of the interviews emerges as that of production designer Tom Hammock, entitled “Falling into Place” , with him describing, among other things, how the production crew fixed up the mansion You’re Next mansion as a favour to the owners in exchange for shooting there. We also get a making of and some animated storyboards. Video essays are a staple of these Second Sight rereleases, and in “Slashers Don’t Die” Tim Coleman examines the ways You’re Next engages with, and subverts the slasher formula, with particular reference to the foundational texts: Psycho, Peeping Tom, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Black Christmas, Halloween, Friday the 13th. He also, quite, rightly, spotlights the character of Erin, who is surely the great Final Girl of the 2010s – prefiguring Samara Weaving (coincidentally, also an Aussie) in Ready or Not by the best part of a decade.