Youre Next

Plot

A couple is seen being murdered in their house by assailants wearing various animal masks.

Later, a woman named Erin accompanies her boyfriend Crispian Davison to his family reunion at their rural Missouri vacation home. Present are Crispian's parents Aubrey and Paul, Drake (Crispian's older brother) and Kelly (Drake's wife), younger Davison siblings Felix and Aimee, Zee (Felix's girlfriend) and Tariq (Aimee's boyfriend).

During a dinner argument, crossbow bolts are shot through the window, hitting and killing Tariq and wounding Drake. With their cell phone signals jammed by the attackers, Aimee runs out the front door to get help, but runs into a garrote wire which slices her throat and quickly dies from blood loss. Crispian leaves the house to find help. Paul brings Aubrey to her bedroom upstairs; when Paul leaves, Fox Mask appears from under the bed and kills Aubrey. The rest of the family rushes upstairs to find Aubrey dead with the words "You're next" scrawled on the wall in blood.

Erin texts 911 and begins finding objects that can be used as weapons. She encounters Tiger Mask and evades his attack, wounding him in the process. Kelly returns to the bedroom and discovers Fox Mask still hiding under the bed, in which she panics and runs to the neighboring home. After pounding on the window for help, she gets inside but discovers the murdered couple who were killed earlier and is killed by Lamb Mask. Back at the house, Tiger Mask fails to kill Erin and is in turn killed by her with a meat tenderizer. Lamb Mask finds Drake, but Erin stabs him with a screwdriver and he retreats.

While exploring the house, Paul finds evidence that the killers had been staying in the house for a while. He tries to tell Zee and Felix, but Fox Mask slits his throat. It is revealed that Felix and Zee hired the assassins to murder the family and collect their inheritance. Meanwhile, Erin (still unaware of Felix and Zee's scheme) and Zee set up traps together; Erin explains that she grew up on a survivalist compound where she learned her combat and survival skills. Zee is about to attempt to kill Erin, but is interrupted. Felix lures Drake to the basement and fatally stabs him with several screwdrivers.

Erin overhears an argument between Felix, Zee, Fox Mask and Lamb Mask. Realizing their plans, she escapes from the house, injuring her leg in the process. Lamb Mask pursues Erin but she stabs him in the head. Realizing she cannot outrun the remaining killer with a wounded leg, Erin returns to the house and sets up a trap at the front door. Fox Mask, however, enters the house through a window, so she sets up an ambush in the basement and kills him with a log. With their hired assassins dead, Zee and Felix attempt to kill Erin themselves, but she brutally kills them both. Crispian calls Felix's phone, and when Erin picks up the call, he inadvertently reveals his involvement in the scheme. Crispian returns to the house and, ignoring his attempts to bribe her with money, Erin fatally stabs him in the neck and eye.

A policeman arrives and shoots Erin in the shoulder, having seen her kill Crispian. After calling for backup, he attempts to enter the house but is accidentally killed by Erin's front door trap that was intended for Fox Mask.

Production

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 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.

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

Release

You're Next premiered on September 10, 2011 at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and opened at other film festivals later.

On September 21, 2011, Lionsgate announced that it had acquired American, British, and Canadian distribution rights to the film for just $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 23, 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 $26,895,418.

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 75%, based on 141 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. 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 score of 66 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

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 the film "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", although he commented that the film was, in general, unoriginal. Matt Glasby of Total Film called the film "funny and tense, rather than hilarious and terrifying", and complimented the film for being a "good" horror-comedy. Barbara VanDenburgh (Arizona Republic) gave the film 3.5 out of 5 stars, stating the film 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 film's 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 5 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".

Home media

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