YOU'RE NEXT

year: 2013 cast: Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, Barbara Crampton rating: ***1/2

With the right amount of ominous music, even human adversaries can seem demonic and otherworldly before they’re revealed, so a John Carpenter-style synthesized soundtrack really captures the feeling of impending doom within this particular rural/spooky location. And if you read the words YOU'RE NEXT in blood red paint, it should be taken literally…

The Davison family has a lot of money, class, and problems. But without giving too much away, it can be said there’s finally a horror flick, within a slew of mediocre entries, that realizes – through dark comedy and violence –  the audience is full aware that the haunted house, or in this case, invaded house genre has been done nearly to death. In other words, all the cliches seem intentional... And when one of the characters fights back with surprising resilience against a group of mask-wearing antagonists, we finally have a woman well worth rooting for.

Sharni Vinson plays Erin, the soft-spoken, unassuming girlfriend of Crispian, one of three ecclectic sons of Rob Morgan’s Paul Davison, retired with the busman’s chore of fixing-up his very large house. But relaxation ends when, during a wine-sipping dinner party with mom, dad, sister, three brothers and their women, a horde of crossbows crash into the living room.

From this shaky-cam barrage the film catapults into a more punctuating and personal body-count horror flick where the sole survivor, instead of running frantically like your typical scream queen victim, uses various weapons and traps, and, unlike those heartless villains, she winds up having most of the bloody fun, for a change… That alone makes YOU’RE NEXT worth watching.