You're Next

You're Next is a 2011 American slasher film directed and edited by Adam Wingard, written by Simon Barrett and starring Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, A. J. Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Barbara Crampton and Rob Moran. The plot concerns an estranged family under attack by a group of masked assailants during a family reunion.

Produced on a low budget, You're Next had its world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival Midnight Madness program and was theatrically released on August 23, 2013, in the United States. The film grossed over $26 million from a $1 million production budget and has since gained a cult following.

Plot
The film opens with a couple, Talia and Erik Harson, having sex. After a shower, Erik finds "you're next" written on the window in Talia's blood; her body is lying dead on the ground. An attacker wearing a lamb mask kills Erik with a machete.

Erin accompanies her boyfriend, Crispian Davison, to his family reunion at their vacation home in rural Missouri. Present are Crispian's parents Aubrey and Paul, Crispian's older brother Drake and his wife Kelly, Crispian's younger siblings Felix and Aimee, and their partners, Zee and Tariq, respectively.

During dinner, someone shoots crossbow bolts through the window, one of which hits Tariq and kills him. The survivors discover that their cell phone reception has been jammed. Aimee runs outside for help but runs into a garrote wire which slices her throat, killing her. Another intruder in a fox mask murders Aubrey with a machete after she departs to sleep, leaving the words "you're next" in blood on the wall.

Kelly flees the house, going to Erik's house nearby, where she finds Erik's corpse. Lamb Mask kills her by driving an ax into her head. Crispian leaves the house to look for help. Tiger Mask attacks Erin but she stabs his arm then crushes his skull with a meat tenderizer.

Paul finds sleeping bags, food wrappers, and bottles of urine in the closet, indicating the killers have been staying in the house for some time. Fox Mask slits his throat, killing him. It is revealed that Felix and Zee hired the assassins to murder the family so they could collect their inheritance. Lamb Mask finds Tiger Mask's corpse and goes into a rage. He discovers a wounded Drake but retreats after Erin stabs him with a screwdriver. Erin sets up nail traps, explaining to Zee that she grew up in a survivalist compound where she learned combat and survival skills. Felix kills Drake out of pity by stabbing him with screwdrivers.

Erin jumps through a window to escape Fox Mask, injuring her leg. Lamb Mask is injured by one of her nail traps. Erin overhears an argument between Felix, Zee, Fox Mask, and Lamb Mask, revealing that Lamb Mask and Tiger Mask were brothers. She is able to ambush and kill Lamb Mask by stabbing him.

Realizing she cannot outrun Fox Mask with a wounded leg, she sets a trap at the front door where an axe would fall and kill anyone who opens the door. Fox Mask is undeterred by this trap, but is lured into the basement and killed with a log. Zee and Felix attempt to kill Erin, but she kills Felix by shredding his head with a blender before stabbing Zee. Felix's cell phone rings and Erin answers without speaking. Believing he is speaking to Felix, Crispian reveals his involvement in the scheme. Erin confronts him when he returns. Crispian explains that she was never meant to be targeted and attempts to bribe her into staying quiet. Horrified that he would sacrifice his family for money, she kills him by stabbing him in the neck and eye.

A police officer arrives and shoots Erin in the shoulder, having seen her kill Crispian. He attempts to enter the house and falls victim to Erin's axe trap, with the axe swinging at his head just as the movie cuts to a blood-splattered "You're next".

Cast

 * Sharni Vinson as Erin
 * Nicholas Tucci as Felix Davison
 * Wendy Glenn as Zee
 * A. J. Bowen as Crispian Davison
 * Joe Swanberg as Drake Davison
 * Rob Moran as Paul Davison
 * Barbara Crampton as Aubrey Davison
 * Sarah Myers as Kelly Davison
 * Amy Seimetz as Aimee Davison
 * Ti West as Tariq
 * Lane Hughes as Tom / Fox Mask
 * L.C. Holt as Craig / Lamb Mask
 * Simon Barrett as Dave / Tiger Mask
 * Larry Fessenden as Erik Harson
 * Kate Lyn Sheil as Talia
 * Calvin Reeder as Officer Trubiano

Development
Barrett wrote the film after Wingard told him that he wanted to do a home invasion movie, noting that they were the only films that still truly frightened him.

From there, Barrett wrote a script inspired by Agatha Christie mysteries as well as a combination of screwball comedies and chamber mysteries. Barrett would later note that A Bay of Blood was probably in the back of his mind when writing the film, although he only realized this after the fact.

Wingard credited the film's humor to Barrett's sense of humor and cynicism. Some of the dinner conversations were improvised and based on real-life experiences the filmmakers had with family members.

Filming
The film was shot in 2011 at a mansion in Columbia, Missouri. Filming took place over four weeks, and shooting consisted mostly of night shoots filmed from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Release
You're Next premiered on September 17, 2011 at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and opened at other film festivals later.

Four days after its premiere, Lionsgate acquired American, British, and Canadian distribution rights to the film for $2 million. The film was part of the competition during the 20th edition of the international festival of fantastic movies at Gerardmer (France) in February 2013, and it won the Syfy prize of the event.

Box office
The film opened in the United States on August 9, 2013 and earned $7,020,196 in its opening weekend. The film closed on October 17, having grossed $18,494,006 in the domestic box office and $8,401,475 overseas for a worldwide total of $26,895,481.

Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 80% based on 161 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The site's critical consensus states, "You're Next's energetic and effective mix of brutal gore and pitch black humor will please horror buffs and beyond." Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.

Vanity Fair's Jordan Hoffman called You're Next "one of the more entertaining horror pictures of the last 10 years". Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+, praising "Wingard's canny knack for leavening his characters' gory demises with sick laughs and clever Rube Goldberg twists (razor-sharp piano wire hasn't been used this well since 1999's Audition). It's like Ordinary People meets Scream" and describing the final shot as "deliciously twisted". R. Kurt Osenlund of Slant Magazine gave the film 4 stars, stating that it "brazenly merges the home-invasion thriller with the dysfunctional family dramedy". Joshua Rothkopf (Time Out New York) called the film "solidly satisfying" and a "minor triumph", though adding that it was, in general, unoriginal. Matt Glasby of Total Film called the film "funny and tense, rather than hilarious and terrifying", and complimented it for being a "good" horror-comedy. Barbara VanDenburgh (Arizona Republic) gave the film 3.5 out of 5 stars, stating that it was not "very scary" and that its "budget for red food coloring was no doubt higher than the one for script doctoring"; although she complimented the score and "gruesome" conclusion. Mark Jenkins of The Washington Post said the movie "is at times bloodily entertaining. And if the central plot twist isn't all that clever, at least the movie offers some motivation for its mayhem", while Jane Horwitz wrote for the same newspaper: "For slasher/horror fans 17 and older, You're Next may provide sufficient homicidal entertainment". Liam Lacey (The Globe and Mail) gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, describing it as "well-executed" but "rudimentary".

A review from St. Louis Post-Dispatch called the film unoriginal, while Rene Rodriguez (The Miami Herald) panned the film, calling it "practically insulting", and dubbed the premise "idiotic". John DeFore (The Hollywood Reporter) wrote that the film's characters were mostly unsympathetic and that more humor would have improved the film. Stephen Whitty of The Newark Star-Ledger, in a review for The Portland Oregonian, gave the film a C+ rating, agreeing it was unoriginal and uninventive, comparing it to The Purge and The Last House on the Left. Scott Bowles of USA Today gave You're Next a negative review, describing it as repetitive and stating that it did not have a purpose.

Total Film placed Erin (Sharni Vinson) at number one on their list of "50 Most Bad-Ass Female Horror Leads". Entertainment Weekly placed Erin at number thirteen on its list of "The Best Horror Heroines in Film."

Home media
The film was released via video on demand on December 27, 2013, and via DVD and Blu-ray on January 14, 2014.