CBR's 31 Days of Halloween is a daily feature highlighting our staff's favorite horror movies to watch during the month of October. Reader, beware - you're in for a scare!
In the saturated and often repetitive landscape of home invasion horror, You're Next stands far above the rest with its gore, suspense and mystery -- even if it's not the most well-known. Adam Wingard's surprise hit dropped in 2011, only a few years after The Strangers reignited interest in the subgenre, which was built on classics like The Last House on the Left and Cape Fear. Even for veteran horror fans, home invasion films remain the genre's most terrifying offerings. With many based on true stories, home invasions are a collective fear, one that has a strong hold on reality, unlike supernatural tales and monster stories.
No one knows this better than Wingard and writer Simon Barrett, who use the subgenre's tropes to great effect while adding in a hefty dose of mystery and paranoia. The result is an inventive film with a badass female lead put in a terror-inducing situation. You're Next is sure to have audiences screaming at their screens, making it more than worthy of being a top contender for Halloween viewing.
What Is You're Next About?
You're Next follows the Davisons, an upper-classers whose exorbitant amount of money can't hold their family together. In an attempt to heal their fractured family relationship, Paul (Rob Moran) and Aubrey (Barbara Crampton) invite their four children and their significant others to their vacation home to celebrate their wedding anniversary. As if the dysfunction and bickering aren't bad enough, the celebration really goes off the rails when masked, crossbow-wielding assailants begin attacking the Davisons.
Among the family is Erin (Sharni Vinson), the girlfriend of Crispin Davison (A. J. Bowen). While Erin initially seems like the black sheep of the bunch, she quickly proves the most capable and prompts the Davisons to work together to survive or risk becoming the next victims. What follows is a tense game of cat-and-mouse as the group tries to outsmart their attackers while figuring how why they are being targeted in the first place.
Why Adam Wingard's You're Next Is Mandatory Halloween Viewing
You're Next is a perfect balancing act of new and old ideas. Wingard and Barrett know the subgenre, understand their audience and want them to know, "Yeah, we get it." As such, the film offers what's expected: a remote house, masked killers and a cast of likable and unlikeable characters. However, it trades teenagers for an upper-class dysfunctional family and a mindless plot for one drenched in mystery and suspense. In lesser words, it's a clever film. And while the majority of the plot is serious and filled with grim reveals, there is also a darkly comedic undertone that genre fans are sure to pick up on. Also giving You're Next a bit of horror authority is the addition of genre icons Barbara Crampton, Larry Fessenden and Ti West.
As a slasher, You're Next delivers lots of blood, gore and ingenuity when it comes to kills. Perhaps what's most refreshing, though, is Sharni Vinson's Erin, a final girl who deserves a place among other great scream queens like Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode and Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott. While Erin's backstory might be convenient for the situation, it's still refreshing to see a character making smart choices, even when surrounded by panic and bloodshed. With her outcast status and quick wits, she's someone everyone can root for.
Beyond surface-level appeals, however, You're Next offers subtle commentary on generational divides of wealth and mentality. Aubrey and Paul rarely mention money, whereas it's a main talking point among the Davisons children, with many of them struggling despite their parents owning an impressive country house. The children recognize their parents -- who act as metaphors for greedy institutions and a broken system -- won't save them and may even blame them for not having it together despite setting them up for failure in the first place. In that respect, You're Next plays on common millennial fears around financial stability while spotlighting the often disconnected relationship between boomers and millennials that's become the subject of Internet memes in recent times.
However, for the most part, the social commentary is kept just under the surface. This allows audiences to watch the film for carnage and scares but offers others the option to delve a little deeper into the themes if they so choose. Wrapping the story in just over 90 minutes, You're Next gets right into the action without wasting a minute of its runtime.
How to Watch You're Next - Is the Home Invasion Slasher Streaming?
Those looking to stream You're Next in celebration of the Halloween season can do so on Peacock with a subscription. However, audiences can all rent or buy the film on Prime Video, Vudu or Apple TV. While the film might not be as well known among mainstream viewers, it's attained a significant cult following and continued to delight genre fans for over a decade. You're Next expertly combines family dramedy with horror, and its self-awareness makes it a bloody good time.