You're Next (2011)

"When the Davison family comes under attack during their wedding anniversary getaway, the gang of mysterious killers soon learns that one of victims harbors a secret talent for fighting back."

I thought it best to wait until the other horror bloggers exhausted their overpraise before watching "You're Next". It's been described as everything under the Sun including a parody and a comedy, but I can't see how this low-budget crap could be either of the latter except unintentionally.

Basically, "You're Next" is a mixture of Mario Bava's "A Bay of Blood" (1971) and Dae-wung Lim's "To Sir with Love" aka "Bloody Reunion" (2006). Despite the masks which the bad guys wear, it's not overly similar to "Ils" (2006), "The Strangers" (2008), or "The Purge" (2013) apart from the home invasion aspect. Hell, if it wasn't being classed as such, I wouldn't even call this a horror movie. It's more of a crime drama with horror elements than anything else.

After 25 minutes of boredom, which was made worse by everything being filmed with a handheld camera, all the shouting and screaming over the top of each other just made me want to walk out. I didn't, of course, because that would be wasteful, but I didn't enjoy anything which followed either.

I wonder what this movie is called?

While "You're Next" might be fine for teenagers who want the kills to occur off camera with only the aftermath shown, I prefer to see the brutality in all its glory. Unfortunately, every time there's the potential for something to be "lush", the punches are pulled. Whether that's due to the budget or because Adam Wingard is a shitty filmmaker is anyone's guess.

Out of the not very inventive deaths, only two deliver a decent amount of blood, and their repetitive nature gets old pretty fast. I suppose stabbing someone in the head either with a crossbow bolt, a screwdriver, or a knife is the quickest way to finish the job, but it doesn't make interesting viewing. It also takes considerably more force to stab anything through someone's skull than some tiny Australian girl is capable of, so there's that too. Female empowerment, my arse!

Even though nearly everybody knows about the twists now, I'm not going to spoil it more for you except to say that the reveal comes far too early at around the 50 minute mark. Thus, there's another 40 minutes of clichés, poorly written dialogue, and bad acting to get through afterwards which I can't be bothered to talk about. As thrillers go, "Panic Room" (2002) is infinitely more entertaining, tense, and scarier than this drivel.

"Our target for this year's purge is hiding in your home."

The only character who I almost liked was Zee played by Wendy Glenn, simply because she's hot! There's no depth of characterisation to anyone though. In generic slasher-style, they only exist to die as quickly and as unpleasantly as possible.

At the end of the day, "You're Next" is just another overhyped home invasion movie in an oversaturated subgenre. No wonder it sat on the shelf for two years. In better days, this would have been straight-to-DVD fodder rather than being worthy of a theatrical release.

Ils (2006)

(AKA "Them")



"Lucas and Clementine live peacefully in their isolated country house, but one night they wake up to strange noise... they're not alone... and a group of hooded assailants begin to terrorize them throughout the night."

"Ils" is a French home invasion thriller supposedly based on a true story set in Romania, and it's a good one. I wasn't expecting much from a film with a slightly predictable plot and a running time of only 77 minutes, but when I first watched this four years ago, I got a nice surprise. Having now rewatched it, I still can't find too many flaws though it has obviously been eclipsed in nastiness by "À l'intérieur" and "Martyrs".

The first ten minutes are by far the best and could easily stand alone as a short. It reminded me a bit of the ending of "À Ma Soeur" but without all the sexual nastiness. I found the Romanian language quite intriguing too. You don't often hear a lot of Romanian spoken in horror films (in spite of the location of Transylvania) and, as another romance language, I found it quite easy to understand without subtitles (though of course I still had the subtitles on). It's sort of like French in structure but the words are pronounced differently if that makes any sense. Obviously that's why the main character later is supposed to be a French language teacher. Well, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for a French actress to play an English teacher in a Romanian school, would it?

The rest is a pretty formulaic home invasion story but is shot and acted exceptionally well. Olivia Bonamy (Clementine) is great to look at and, after a short (15 minute) break following the first murders to build up some sympathetic characterisation, the action is real edge-of-your-seat stuff which doesn't let up until the end. I think this even beats "Haute Tension" which I know a lot of people rate very highly.

Suspense is mostly created by the reactions of Clementine and her pretty useless husband Lucas to various bumps and noises as their house is invaded as, until the final 10 minutes, you don't really see or find out who the "them" are. What makes it worse is that it's all very believable.

Some people have said that "Ils" isn't gory. I don't know what film they were watching, but there are lots of blood effects and very realistic woundings. Realism is the key word here. You don't need buckets of fake blood thrown over everything (or a huge budget) to make a scary film anyway, and it's certainly better than "The Strangers" which it pre-dates. Even if the "true story" isn't, it'll still give you something to think about.

I'm giving it 7 out of 10. The film does have a few weaknesses, especially in length and denouement, and you can really only watch it once. The tension will make you think that you've just watched something with an 8 out of 10 rating if you aren't quite so critical as I happen to be. Yes, I still recommend this film.