“Why?!” “Why not?”
You’re Next (2011)
****SPOILERS AHEAD***
Adam Winguard’s You’re Next is a clear representation of a film pushing its respective genre into new territories. With certain conventions staying true to the slasher film aesthetic, Winguard simultaneously manages to progress the genre as some characteristics bend and challenge past tropes. To be considered a slasher film, young and attractive victims are terrorized in a remote location as a traumatized serial killer uses barbaric weapons to kill them off one by one. You’re Next follows those guidelines yet doesn’t quite fit within the certain mold.
The Remote Location: The Davisons meets up for a family reunion in a remote vacation house in quiet Missouri. Neighbors are miles away and in addition, the closest neighbors are murdered in the opening scene. To make a bad situation worse, the family’s phones are deemed inoperable due to a nearby signal jammer. They have no contact to the outside world.
This is similar to the classic horror film The Shining as the family of three are left in an abandoned ski hotel, miles away from functioning civilization. Resemblant to You’re Next, the phones are disabled.
The Masked Terrorizers: The skilled assassins don animal masks giving them a satanic and demonic persona. Their identities are kept hidden until the end as a defaced murderer is far more terrorizing than an unobscured villain.
From Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask, to Bubba Sawyer’s skin compilation mask, slashers have almost always scared their victims from behind a DIY mask. What they all have in common is their traumatic childhood as well.
Problematic Nurture: Felix and Crispian’s childhoods were arguably difficult. With a family that doesn’t care for one another, Felix and Crispian’s hate is driven by their lack of a loving and nurturing childhood.
In classic slasher films, the villain is almost always motivated by a wrongdoing that occurred to them in their developing years. Whether it’s a girlfriend who cheated on the villain, or a mother whose son was mistreated by camp counselors, the villain is always motivated by a desire for revenge.
Barbaric Tools of Destruction: Many slasher films would end a lot faster if the killer had a preference for guns rather than blades. In You’re Next, the masked intruders utilize crossbows, hatchets, and garrotes. This makes for an increasingly violent and gory way to eliminate players. On the other hand, this allows the victims to fight back using the same tools to defend their home. Sound familiar?
Notorious slashers use machetes, chainsaws, kitchen knives or home-made claws. They want to savor the moment and ultimately let their victims die slowly and painfully. Things would go a lot differently if Freddy Krueger had a luger.
The Victims: The victims in this story are attractive and relatively young (with exception to the parents). The majority of them are contributors to Felix and Crispian’s difficult childhood. Whether it’s the parents who didn’t treat them with the right amount of love and affection or siblings who kept them in the shadows, Felix and Crispian are fueled by revenge with a larger incentive to receive the family’s fortune.
Young and attractive teens are often the targets for the most notorious slashers. They are the group of kids who smoke, drink, have sex and break other societal values. They are sometime seen as the ‘scum’ of the youth. Some sources suggest the reason for this attack on this subgroup is often a message to society to follow certain moral values and stay on the ‘right path’. One could even say slasher films are a parental voice telling us to be good and stay good.
However, among the group of hooligans is the virgin. While the term ‘virgin’ does not necessarily adopt its literal meaning, the virgin can be inexperienced in other deeds such as drinking, smoking or in the case of You’re Next, our virgin (Erin played by Sharni Vinson) strays from the crowd because she did not contribute in the negative upbringing of Felix and Crispian. She differs from the rest of the family as she is possibly the only normal and benevolent character there. As the slasher film gods dictate, the virgin is often left to be the ‘final girl’ or the character who stays alive until the end to defeat the masked monster.
Erin isn’t a typical final girl which is the beginning of how Winguard starts to shift the genre. While the final girl is classically untalented and is only aided by a miraculous burst of confidence in the end, Erin is able to combat the intruders with knowledge she has acquired from training and being raised in the outback. She is consistently clever and is often the character saving the others from a fatal demise.
While many people can say that slasher films often portray a strong female character, Erin is what a strong female character should be. A strong female character isn’t a sexy, skirt-wearing, belle. A strong female character is a woman who will trudge around a house with a punctured leg, blood on her face, and use her wits to intelligently eliminate the threat.
I absolutely loved watching Erin’s progress throughout the film because she was the only one in the whole batch of victims who had any strategy to her moves. She made the situation feel like a bloody game of chess while all the other characters served as fish in a barrel. Winguard change to the classic final girl will serve as a new template for exciting slashers, but he doesn’t stop there.
Winguard adds levels of complexity to the plot, elevating it from a cat and mouse slasher to an intuitive experience where the audience is always in awe of both the victims’ and the killers’ creativity. Instead of one masked monster, there are three demonic figures. One could even argue there are five or six including Felix, Crispian and Zee. Felix and Crispian’s masks aren’t a physical mask but rather the use of hired assassins to hide their malicious intent. Not only are they motivated by a blind thirst for revenge, they are in dire need of money, a situation we have all encountered once in our lifetimes. They are more relatable and in a sick, twisted, way justify their desperation.
One thing I noticed to be different is something I like to call the ‘Out of the Woods’ moment. This is when the final girl seemingly escapes from the terror only to find herself again within the killer’s reach. This is seen in Ridley Scott’s Alien as Ripley boards the escape aircraft, only to find that the alien is aboard the craft with her. While this moment is often carried on longer, in You’re Next, this moment is abridged when Erin kills the last accomplice (Crispian) but is then shot in the shoulder by a responding police officer. We think the threat is over and then BAM, another surprise!
And above all, I’ve never seen anyone kill someone with a blender.
While all these twists and turns catch us by surprise, Winguard expertly foreshadows the ending with clues throughout the film. The moment when I noticed there was something wrong with Crispian was when he, Felix and his father took a picture together. Crispian was standing in between his brother and his father and stood farther back. This moment of exclusion fueled my imagination, making me think “why was this photo important to have in the movie?”
When the killings started and Crispian decides to leave and ‘get help,’ I immediately concluded that he would come back in the end as a final twist. However, Winguard captivated me throughout the whole film and when the reveal happened, I had completely forgotten about my hypothesis.
In Donato Totaro’s article “The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and Horror”, the idea of Vagina Dentata is brought up in relation to the male’s fear of a strong woman. The female character is alway underestimated. Unfortunately, a majority of the audience does not expect the female to be the hero at the end of the movie. However, as aforementioned, the female’s burst of luck comes almost as a deus-ex-machina in the end. Erin is a strong character since the beginning and it clearly scares the males.
However comedic that scene may be, it speaks volumes in regards to the female’s involvement in slasher films and films in general. As every piece of art is meant to critique society, You’re Next manages to do so in an often underrated genre. Fortunately, Winguard makes moves to change these accepted immoralities and inspires filmmakers like myself to question these tropes.
“Critique by creating” — Michelangelo
