This movie is a bit of the revenge portion of "I Spit on Your Grave" crossed with the home invasion of "Funny Games" and the antics of "Home Alone." But it comes out looking like "Bay of Blood," a surprising family blood feud that ends badly for everyone, and was lots of fun. For the first half hour, as we meet various unattractive loser characters whose actions and dialogue seems largely pointless, through the beginning of the home invasion where the audience was in stitches as a character ran in slow motion into razor wire. It looked like the movie was a failure and the audience (scarier so far than the film itself) was about to rebel and turn the movie into an interactive "Rocky Horror" like experience. Then, the Australian girlfriend of one of the brothers in the family at the center of the home invasion, begins fighting back and put the film squarely back on track, and won the audience back. As we lose many central characters and learn the motivations of the masked invaders, the stakes raise for one of the most proactive Final Girls I've seen in a while. The ending is a bloody, satisfying free for all that is both suspenseful and funny and elicited cheers. There were great moments of subtle intentional humor, but parts of the movie seem deadly earnest and simply don't work. The characters at the beginning are either loathsome – not in a good way - or not likable enough to win us over. This is why the audience was at first on the side of the villains. I don't think that all of this was intentional on the part of the filmmaker. The clumsy beginning and weak characters are the only things stopping me from not rating it even higher.
Review of You're Next
