Currently, filmmaker Adam Wingard is the talk of the town, thanks to the impending release of his new horror-action film, Onslaught. The A24 film released this weekend and has already been racking up some exceedingly divisive reviews, with some praising it as Wingard’s greatest cinematic accomplishment to date and others detesting it. But given that everyone is talking about Wingard and his previous works, now is as good a time as any to bring up a subject near and dear to my heart: how great his 2013 slasher, You’re Next, is.
To call Wingard’s filmography a bit up-and-down in terms of quality and reception would be putting it lightly. This is a filmmaker who has both The Guest (a highly acclaimed and outright revered cult classic) and the live-action Netflix Death Note (a film that literally no one is willing to go-to-bat for) in his catalogue, so it can be difficult for newcomers to parse sometimes which of his films are worth exploring. Even the films he’s made that I’m not a fan of, I’ve always found fascinating, so I think they’re all more than worth a watch, but even with that in mind, I find You’re Next to be one of his very best.
You’re Next starts in the same way as any number of low-budget invasion horror films that you’ve seen before. You get acquainted with a family and their own interpersonal dynamics in a secluded house in the woods, just in time for a group of masked antagonists to show up and start killing people off, one by one. But the true ingenuity of Wingard and co-writer Simon Barrett’s script reveals itself around the midpoint of the film, when they manage to turn the entire premise and slasher subgenre on its head.
I can’t stress this enough: if you haven’t seen You’re Next, you should go watch it before reading any more of this. Spoilers lie ahead, and it’s a helluva viewing experience the first time through if you know as little as possible, so if that’s you, go do that. Okay? Okay.
The moment in question is when the film’s protagonist and final girl heir apparent, Erin (played wonderfully by Sharni Vinson), is attacked by one of the masked killers. Up until this point, from the moment the killers first attacked, Erin has demonstrated unexpected insights and survival skills, surprising many of the other characters. But when she is attacked outright, the entire film shifts; what begins as a horror sequence with her seemingly at the mercy of one of the killers is inverted, as she disarms him and viciously murders him.
It’s such a great moment that utilizes audiences’ familiarity with the horror genre and its tropes against them. It manages to subvert expectations, raise the stakes, and immediately recontexualize the larger themes of the film in fascinating ways. The whole film is full of great twists and turns, unraveling much more like an Agatha Christie novel than like a traditional slasher, but this is among its very best moments. Wingard sells the ever-loving shit out of the whole thing with slow-motion, practical gore effects, and hero shots to-boot.
To this end, the fact that Onslaught’s marketing very much looks like the filmmaker stepping back into the You’re Next zone for the first time in several years has been more than enough reason to rejoice. The next time you’re looking for a horror film to put on with a group of friends, I genuinely cannot recommend You’re Next enough. I’ve never seen it do anything less than absolutely deliver with a fresh audience.
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