31 Days of Halloween: You're Next

House party

Looking for some film recommendations for Halloween? 31 Days of Halloween exhumes some of our favourite horror films, giving all you film-hungry ghouls a brief run-down of some of the most frightful film classics to shamble into cinemas. So grab some treats, fire up your cauldron, and join us as we celebrate some of the best fright flicks of all-time this Halloween.

You're Next

Yesterday we revved up our chainsaws and dissected classic gore flick Evil Dead II, today we're fast-forwarding a few decades and placing one of favourite slasher films of recent times under the microscope, home invasion horror You're Next from director Adam Wingard.

A decidedly modern twist on a classic formula, You're Next takes the idea of the slasher film (a group of unwitting men and women being picked off from the shadows by some unscrupulous blade-wielding bogeyman), adds a heap of dysfunctional family drama and rounds the whole thing off with moments of bleak, black comedy. The main thrust of the plot revolves around the family Davison who, reunited for a family together, find themselves fighting for their lives when a pack of masked marauders descend on the family home.

So far, so stalk and slash; what sets You're Next apart from the competition is its characters, whose skeletons start peeking out of the closet as the bodies begin to pile up. There's backbiting, arguing and worse, as the family's façade of affluence begins to crumble under the masked men's gory onslaught. Wingard has a steady hand, letting the family drama simmer away in the background before letting the blood flow. His characters, too, display a surprising amount of resilience, with main character Erin discovering an unexpected talent for home defence that begins to transform the film as it enters its second-half.

Savvy, suspenseful and with plenty of surprises, You're Next is a meta-horror movie with bite, and proof that there's still some life left in the tired slasher genre.