2013 was a good year for horror films. The bigger budget scarefests such as World War Z sat well alongside the heavily promoted remakes (Carrie, Texas Chainsaw and Evil Dead had varying degrees of success) and American Mary, V/H/S/2 and Ben Wheatley’s nightmarish A Field in England told of an independent scene rich in ideas and an ability to scare us in new and delightful ways.
One of our favourite horror films from last year is Adam Wingard’s You’re Next, a disarmingly funny and tense home invasion movie which made a genre star of its heroine Sharni Vinson. What Wingard and his writer Simon Barrett do so well is set their scene perfectly well within the conventions of the genre before pulling the rug out from under your feet and delivering a film you weren’t expecting.
Like another surprisingly solid horror from last year, The Purge, the film concerns itself with the balance of power rather than a tickbox bodycount and Wingard and Barrett are clearly relishing the chance to show us something we haven’t seen before. Talking about the origins of the film to bloody-disgusting back in TIFF when You’re Next premiered and how it was influenced by a famous opening scene from a horror classic,
I just thought that opening scene from Scream was like the pinnacle of perfect filmmaking. It was mysterious, scary, technically well-shot, the acting was great and most importantly, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before…I wanted to try to do something that’s less bogged down by drama and more about creating tension, creating a fun kind of movie.
When you see You’re Next there is that same feeling of a director and writer setting us up and then throwing us into the dark. In a genre beset with cliche traps and facsimile scares this is a very, very good thing.
The film is available to stream right now on iTunes.
Keep up with the film over on Facebook, Twitter or enter the Fright Club itself to find out more.
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