They're Not Home Alone
The Davidson family don't see much of each other but they are all meeting up at the now empty woodland mansion for a rare family reunion. And it doesn't take long for old issues to rise up from the past and for these siblings along with their partners to end up having rows. But that is nothing compared to what happens when they discover they are not alone as animal mask wearing intruders are in the house and are brutally picking them off one by one. Fortunately for the Davidson family Crispian's (AJ Bowen) girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson) is pretty good when it comes to fighting back.
I suppose you could say that the mark of a good director is that they can take something which is standard and been done many times before yet still get the audience interested in what is going on. So with that in mind I have to applaud director Adam Wingard because "You're Next" is just another home invasion movie yet through his directing, the brutality of the violence and the close up nature of some of the cinematography combines to deliver plenty of atmosphere which is what above everything else keeps you involved in the movie including the characters which most are a walking bunch of cliches.
But the thing is that beneath Wingard's effective direction "You're Next" is still just another home invasion movie where one by one the numbers dwindle as each scene gets tenser than the last. Okay so this does have the added entertainment of having the character of Erin who is the movies own Macauley Culkin as she knows a bit about surviving and fighting back but it is all familiar. Well familiar in an extremely bloody way which is what this movie's selling point is, the gruesome nature of people bleeding to death rather than the discovery of who is behind it all and why.
What this all boils down to is that "You're Next" is entertaining and director Adam Wingard has done a good job of delivering that entertainment but at its heart it is just another home invasion movie.
