Lambs to the Slaughter

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(Although I try my best to step around them, this review is a wee bit spoilery.) I think I've documented it fairly well that I'm not one who gets all that squeamish at the movies, so know when I say that I wish You're Next were a smidge less gory it's not really coming from any place of moral or emotional queasiness. As far as I'm concerned, by definition horror movies should make you morally or emotionally queasy. And I'm not aiming that criticism at all of the over-the-top violence in the film either - for example, I wouldn't trade the last ten viscera-spraying minutes for anything. No, this critique comes from a story-telling point of view - its just the film's own internal logic becomes a bit unraveled by its own means of implementation. Once you realize what's going on, if you step outside of it for a minute... well it doesn't make any sense that the bad guys would go about doing things the way they're going about doing things (base point: the absence of guns is totally inexplicable)... except we wouldn't have a movie if they didn't. And I never like that "except." That's not a good "except."

Thankfully the movie isn't really too keen to let you step outside of it for a minute, and plows ahead with so much wit and flair and creaky-floor-boarded glee that to knock it for its dedication to being what it wants to be and what it wants to have so much playing with is really being a stickler, and mostly it'll only bother you if you give the movie much think once its over. These movies are there for stabbing and being stabbed. They're there for that violation of the flesh by one person to another, and I get that - it's a movie that's riffing on them other movies. And whilst it barrels along riffing on Ten Little Indians by way of The Strangers slash Ils (Them) with a hefty helping of juicy rah-rah final girl goodness, you're just having a lot of fun jumping in your seat and going googly-eyed at its jangly-nerved joie de vivre (although in this case I suppose joie de la mort would be more apt).

The movie's also really funny with some killer lines that really slay (har har) and the actors are all well above average for this sort of thing too, which obviously helps make the mania go down - it's a blast for the little wink-wink the casting gives us by giving us a family stuffed with indie horror somebodies (Joe Swanberg and Ti West and AJ Bowen as brothers! Barbara Crampton as Mom! Oh my!), and Sharni Vinson is crazy root-for-able - she grabs the mantle of final girl by the balls and drop-kicks it into the new millennium. The film's bad box office this weekend makes me sad we might not get a follow-up, even though it's perfectly self-contained as is, just because I'd like to see Vinson given free rein to kick some more zoo-masked ass.
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