YOU MIGHT BE THE KILLER (2018) Review
Given people’s tendency to tweet out whacky shit, it’s pretty weird that there aren’t more movies that are openly inspired by twitter threads (I reckon there are loads secretly inspired by them…), but as it currently stands, the only fuckers out their admitting to it is director Brett Simmons and writers Covis Berzoyne and Thomas P. Vitale, whose 2018 supernatural slasher flick, You Might Be the Killer, was inspired by some online banter between author and comic book writer Chuck Wendig and fantasy novelist Sam Sykes. I mean, ‘inspired’ is a funny word. Basically, the filmmakers took Wendig and Sykes’ thread, copied it into Final Draft, and then took each line and expanded the ideas into feature length. Some of the dialogue in the movie is verbatim what appeared on social media, all of which suggests, to me at least, that the two authors responsible for the concept deserve just as much praise as anyone else. And, yeah… everyone here deserves quite a lot of praise, because while You Might Be the Killer doesn’t reach the heights of, say, Cabin in the Woods, as far as low-budget meta horrors go, this is pretty great!
The film opens with Dollhouse’s Fran Kranz’s lead camp councilor, Sam, rushing through the woods in a panicked state, covered head to toe in blood. Unsure what to do, and unable to get through to the local Sheriff, Sam calls his buddy, Chuck — Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Alison Hannigan, who is basically the whole reason I whacked this on to begin with, and… well, she may be relegated to spending the whole movie in a store, but at the very least she doesn’t disappoint in delivering on that Willow Rosenberg-style charm and sweetness — and explains that a crazy masked maniac is stalking the camp grounds, picking off the councilors one by one. The movie then jumps backward as Sam recounts his tale to Chuck, showing us the events leading up to the phone call… or, some of the events, anyway, because the thing is, Sam’s memory is a bit fried, and he seems to be holding a machete! Moreover, he doesn’t appear to be bleeding, so whose blood is it he’s covered in? And what the hell is going on with this creepy wooden mask he has in his possession… the one that apparently seems to be whispering to him, egging him on to kill. Yup, this doesn’t look good for a loveable protagonist, and as Chuck rightly points out, ahem, maybe Sam ‘might be the killer’.
What follows is an oftentimes silly, but never less than clever, deconstruction of slasher movie tropes, as the film flashes backward and forwards piecing together the events, and allowing Kranz and Hannigan the room they need to just kinda to their thing. The flick is smart enough to know that we still need some kind of peril, and so we wind up in a sort of fun little reversal where Kranz’s masked maniac is, in a sense, being hunted by the film’s would-be Final Girl. It’s as hilariously stupid as it is smugly smart, and is exactly the kind of goofy self-awareness that makes meta-horror so much fun when it actually works. Kranz is solid in the lead role — all stuttering, bumbling nervousness of the kind he’d perfected long before we got here — but for me, as a Buffy fangirl, it is Hannigan who steals the show. There’s something just completely wonderful about seeing her back in that Willow-esque role, dolling out the advice and flicking through ancient books of curses and spells. Both actors seem to be having a fair amount of fun, too, and that’s fairly infectious. As such, the solid performances and inventive structure — the movie often circles back around to retell events already seen in a new light, and that’s always fun — elevate this, and while not all of the references and homages land, that doesn’t really harm the overall experience.
The other thing that struck me about You Might Be the Killer, though, is it’s gore. The movie definitely doesn’t shy away from the scarier aspects of the subgenre. While it may be busy deconstructing and commenting on the slasher tropes, it’s also just as excited to be playing with them, and some of the kill sequences are surprisingly gruesome! Moreover, the mask itself is deliciously creepy (also, I couldn’t help but wonder about midway through why the fuck no one has ever gone down the ‘killer mask’ route before… it’s so obvious a plot device that it seems crazy it isn’t overdone!), and the entire premise gives a whole new context to the classic killer point-of-view shots we’re so used to seeing, and the flick uses that to pretty decent effect to. It’s never outright scary, but then that’s not really the point. The movie keeps its tongue firmly in its cheek throughout — we even get an onscreen tally that tells us how many of the camp councilors have been offed at any given time (which is a fun and stylish little device, but it also helps us keep track of where we are in the timeline… smart filmmaking, folks!) — and never strays too far from enjoyably silly.
In the end, it’s not perfect, but it is fun. Meta-horror is a hard one to pull off, and for every Scream or The Final Girls there’s a Killer Concept or Scary Movie, but for the most part You Might Be the Killer works. I mean, I have some questions — who the fuck is Kranz’s Sam contracted with for his mobile phone service, because I don’t get that level of quality or connectivity when I’m just sat on my ass watching movies, let alone running through the woods? — and it is a shame that Hannigan doesn’t get to do much more than stand around in a comic book shop, but these are fairly minor quibbles. Even when the movie is showing its lack of budget — Kranz having to wear the mask for plot reasons during a big bulk of the film is smart, because I’d imagine it means they can have him in the film without paying him to show up for certain sequences — it never really falters. I was legitimately impressed and pleasantly surprised by this one. Sure, it may not be on the level of the greats, but it’s certainly nowhere near the worst. This is a good time at the movies, and if you’re a meta-horror fan, this will certainly scratch that itch until something better comes along! 3/5.
