Feisty heroine reinvigorates slasher flick
Gory, but somewhat funny as well, in a strange way
‘Bloody violence, coarse language, nudity.” The warnings for the horror film You’re Next will probably entice as many viewers as they scare off, but they don’t really do justice to this home-invasion thriller. It’s horrifying, but it’s kind of funny too, in its terrible way: the story of a large dysfunctional family that very quickly becomes a small, non-functional one, it’s also notable for its innovative use of kitchen implements as weapons of mayhem. Is that a meat tenderizer in your hand, or are you happy to pulverize me?
You’re Next doesn’t exactly turn the genre on its ear — indeed, in many ways it’s an update of the proto-zombie invasion classic Night of the Living Dead — but it manages to reinvigorate it with a feisty heroine, some unexpected villains and a generous amount of gut-tightening terror. If that sounds like a fun night at the movies, come on in.
You might want to pack a raincoat, because You’re Next is also one of the goriest horror movies in memory. Just about everyone ends up beaten to a pulp, hacked to death or covered in blood, right from the very first scene when the threat of the title is found written in blood on a window. The man who discovers it — a guy who probably deserves his fate, insofar as he is a professor sleeping with one of his students — is shortly macheted right out of the picture.
We then go to the isolated country home of Aubrey (Barbara Crampton) and Paul (Rob Moran), who are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary. She’s a nervous wreck — Crampton is the scream queen of such classics as Re-Animator and Chopping Mall — and he’s a retired defence contractor, so the scares and slaughter to come are both extra-terrifying and extra-justified.
Along to help the celebrations are their feuding children, most of whom hate one another, and their mates, some of whom look awfully suspicious. You get to know them all eventually, so there’s no need to introduce them here, except to note that when the terrors first start — someone seems to be inside the house, and someone else seems to be outside, shooting crossbow bolts through the windows — the first one to die is a boyfriend who’s an independent filmmaker. He had a movie in the Cleveland underground film festival, and underground is where he’s going to stay.
The bad guys are notable for the fact that aside from crossbows, they carry large hatchets, and they are disguised in animal masks (a lamb, a tiger, and so on) that serve — like that twisted face in the Scream films — to make them even scarier for their blankness. Director Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way To Die) makes generous use of two horror tropes, the point-of-view from outside the house (someone’s watching!) and the soundtrack of the frantic, off-key string section (someone’s coming!) to keep us on edge. While he’s overly fond of that false scare when someone benign pops up from behind a closed door, You’re Next ratchets up the tension convincingly.
The sudden attack does little to reduce the family conflicts. Indeed, even as the wounded lie bleeding on the floor, everyone starts arguing about which sibling is the fastest runner and therefore the best choice to race to the car and get help. It’s every person for him- and herself in this group.
Out of the chaos, one principal does emerge, however. Erin (Sharni Vinson), an Australian immigrant who has arrived as the new girlfriend of son Crispian (AJ Bowen), shows surprising survivalist skills, and one of the pleasures in You’re Next is in watching a victim who is up to the cruelty of the oppressors, a rare and welcome development.
“Why would anybody do this?” someone asks near the beginning of the film, and the answer turns out to be pretty far-fetched if you stop to think about it.
Happily, both stopping and thinking about it are unlikely to happen. The best thing is to sit back and enjoy the discomfort.
She is by equal measure pathetic and heroic in her desire to move forward in Blanche Dubois-style oblivion, and in the hands of Cate Blanchett she is also crazily entertaining.
The Oscar-winning actress for The Aviator rides the very edge of screwball as she negotiates the various scenarios Allen maps out in the somewhat cliché-laden script that includes plenty of fish-out-of-water moments, as well as a sincere single-mom sister with a working-class boyfriend.
So much of this could have looked like a pilot for a new TV comedy about a Bernie Madoff wife working as a barista, but thanks to Blanchett’s balletic performance, every single moment we see Jasmine on screen we feel the urge to laugh and cry at the same time.
We feel her discomfort in every moment. And we also sympathize with her sense of betrayal because she’s trying to create the Rocky montage for herself: She’s out there studying and trying to hold down a job, but it’s still not conjuring the fairy tale results she was seeking.
For a brief moment a new prince appears on the horizon in the form of a single and ambitious diplomat-played by Peter Sarsgaard. And this is where Allen had to make his big directorial decision about whether this would be a Shirley Valentine-meets-Pretty Woman or a modern Medea.
You can guess which one he chose.
That Blue Jasmine is funny at all is the result of the sincerity in all the snobbery. Alec Baldwin keeps his deadpan grin in the can as he hits the sweet notes of a con man in Brooks Brothers clothing, a master of the golf course chatter that wins friends, makes money fall from wallets and creates an aura of inherent privilege and old money.
People wanted to invest their money with Hal (Baldwin) because they believed in him. They were also greedy, somehow believing they could get a much higher return on their money with Hal than with an existing institution.
When the bottom falls out, it’s Jasmine who’s left to collect the pieces — which she packs into those bags and carries around with her for the duration of the film.
Each scene offers a glimpse of the salvaged debris, sometimes through pitiless flashbacks of Jasmine at her haughty prime.
British actress Sally Hawkins is lovely as the sweet, simple, solid, ordinary sibling. But she is designed to disappear, as is everyone, in Jasmine’s turbulent wake. With her propellers churning hard enough to pull her leather-embossed anchors, Jasmine’s an engine on the verge of seizing — and Blanchett makes sure we hear every sputter and sense every stall.
This is entirely her show, but Allen’s inherent comic timing paces the action and frames the whole piece. Even the idea of Woody Allen making a movie featuring the plaid-clad WASP set is kind of funny, without seeing a single frame of Blanchett striding around in Jil Sander sweaters, hobnobbing with a white spritzer in hand.
It’s droll on the surface, but the drum of doom beats deeper because Blue Jasmine is the heiress to all the sorrows of Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche Dubois, her aptly named sisters of classic American fiction. They gave us the red and the white. Blanchett joins their storied ranks by giving us the blue.