You're Next (Adam Wingard, 2011)

7.5/10
As a festival crowd pleaser, You're Next probably would have been great fun. Watched at home, its impact feels diminished, and the disconnect between its existence as both a violent home invasion horror and a borderline-goofy black comedy becomes more emphasized and feels weirdly jarring. It's hard to tell how seriously the movie takes itself, especially when it features an absurd exchange like the following, which may set new highs of brilliant stupidity (spoilers within):
-"You never want to do anything fun. Come on, fuck me on the bed next to your dead mother."
-"This discussion is over."
You're Next mostly comes out looking better than it should the strength of the direction and score, which are both completely on point. The score in particularly is perfectly evocative of some of John Carpenter's best, or the poppy Italian synth stuff that was smeared all over every horror in the late 70's and 80's. The acting is solid all-around too and it's difficult not to root for its central hero/heroine. The humor, when it crops up, is sharp too. But it's not really a scary movie at all and I feel like the ending was a missed opportunity to do something cooler. All in all not bad and does some things very well but not as great as I'd hoped.