Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favourite horror movies. I'm James A. Janisse, and today we're looking at 'You're Next,' a slasher released in 2011. 'You're Next' is a home invasion film written by Simon Barrett and directed by Adam Wingard, two guys who have made a bunch of other movies together, including 'VHS,' 'The Guest,' and the 2016 'Blair Witch.' Although there have been plenty of home invasion movies in the horror genre, 'You're Next' is a memorable entry because of the gruesome kills... ... the dark humor, and most of all, the amazing badassery of Final Girl Erin, played by Sharni Vinson. For anyone who's ever watched a horror movie and wanted the characters to be more competent or intelligent, this is your movie. Erin is ridiculously resourceful and level-headed, and watching her try to survive this situation and save the clueless family she's stuck with makes for an excellent 90 minutes. And like I said before, this movie's got a bunch of really memorable, gory kills. Let's get to 'em. The movie begins with some fuckin'! Don't get too excited though, 'cuz the girl Thalia sure isn't. She's walking off her disappointment when the motion sensor lights outside turn on, so maybe she should be more concerned. But instead she just plays some tunes. The song she puts on is called "Looking for the Magic" by Dwight Tilly, and it's a motif throughout the film. But I can't play it in this video because of copyright. Meanwhile, Mr. Casanova himself, Erik Harson, finishes hosing himself off and goes to his bedroom to find a message on his window reminding him of what movie he's in. It's written in the blood of Thalia, whose body he sees on the ground. I can't tell exactly what happened to her, maybe a throat slit or some other wound to the head? But whatever it is, she dead. And Erik's not far behind, as he stumbles into a masked assailant who grabs him by the throat and raises a machete up for a powerful slash... ...and an off-screen death that splatters blood all over the window. Aww, dude! You're messing up your own message! How's anyone supposed to read what it says now with all that extra blood everywhere? Now we can start meeting the real characters in this movie. The parents of the main family are Paul and Aubrey Davison. Aubrey is played by Barbara Crampton, star of iconic horror films such as 'Re-animator' and 'Chopping Mall.' They're pulling up to this bomb-ass vacation home to prepare a party celebrating their 35-year anniversary with their family. Already headed to the party is Crispian, the middle son of the family, and his girlfriend Erin, who's meeting his family for the first time. She's a little nervous because his family is super well-off, since patriarch Paul just retired from a big-time defense contractor company. Later that night while cleaning, Aubrey hears a crash upstairs. Instead of sticking around to get killed like most horror movie characters, she immediately heads outside to safety. Paul is a bit more investigative, though, and goes upstairs to see if someone's there. But it turns out it's just Crispian, givin' old Paul a bit of a jump scare. Or IS it just Crispian? Since a door creaks open after he and Paul go back downstairs. The next morning, Crispian comes downstairs to find Erin chatting with oldest brother Drake and his wife Kelly. Drake is suffering from an acute case of Douchey Older Brother Syndrome, wrasslin' with Crispian and calling him fat. Crispian gets further annoyed talking to his dad about a fellowship he didn't get because he hasn't been published... ...and admitting that he and Erin are suffering from some real money problems. Night comes, and with it the rest of the family, including sister Amy who seems like a sweetheart, and her boyfriend Tariq, an artsy fartsy scarfsy guy... ...as well as youngest brother Felix and his girlfriend Zee, and with that we have our cast. "I just want you all to know how much it means to us that you're all here." Means a lot to me too, Babs, 'cuz the acting in this movie is one of the things that sets it apart. These are all really talented actors playing very defined characters, and a lot of the casual conversation is improvised so it ends up feeling very real. That's why this dinner scene is so great to watch, as you get a feel for each person and their relationships with the others around them. For instance, Felix and Zee clearly see his family as some kind of joke, and Crispian and Erin are just trying to stay above it all. Drake won't let them, though, 'cuz he pointedly asks them how they met and reveals to everyone that Erin was actually Crispian's TA. Drake voices his thoughts on the matter. "A little unprofessional..." "What?"
"What's that?" This breaks out into a heated family argument with lots of wide-eyed yelling from Crispian... ...until Tariq notices something that makes him get up and go towards the window. As the Davisons continue their family feud, something flies through the window and the family turns around... ...to find that Tariq has a new accessory to match that scarf: a crossbow bolt in the forehead. Fun fact: Tariq was played by horror director Ti West, who's worked with all these guys a lot. A panic breaks out, and as the family screams and drops to the ground, more crossbow bolts fly into the room. We see the assailant aim one at Aubrey, but instead it catches Drake in the back, knocking him down. Erin is already proving herself to be effective, getting Aubrey down safely to the ground and trying to keep everyone else calm. It doesn't quite work on Kelly.
"We're all gonna dieee!!" When their cell phones won't work, Felix provides some useful information about cell phone jammers, surmising the attackers must be using one. "They're illegal, but you can get them on the internet for like 30 bucks." "Felix, you fuckin' lowlife!" "What are you calling me a lowlife for, man? I'm just trying to help the situation!" Erin directs the Davisons to safety, having them use chairs as shields to run past the windows... ...and stopping them from pulling the arrow out of Drake's back, since that would be Bad News Bears. The family tries to come up with a plan of action. Felix's suggesting someone make a run for a vehicle, and they have a brief argument over who should go. "I'm the fastest, but I've got this fucking arrow in my back..."
"You're not going anywhere, baby..." [Crispian offscreen] "What does your shoulder have to do with your legs? I'm the fastest."
"He has a FUCKING ARROW IN HIS BACK!" "Stop yelling at me, Kelly! It's that kind of naturalistic, black humor that really makes me enjoy the movie so much. Erin tries to talk them all into staying, but Amy says she wants to prove herself and help her family. Felix and Paul open the doors as Amy runs full-speed, ready to make a heroic dash. But instead, she runs straight into a wire strung across the doorway. She falls to the ground, her throat gushing with blood, and lies there bleeding to death for a good long while as her parents and siblings scream watching her die. It's actually really effective the way Aubrey screams about her baby dying and Drake goes into shock at the sight of his dead sister. This movie's able to go from funny to emotional on a dime, all while keeping it real. This that good shit, yo! Erin ain't got time for tears... ...instead arming herself with a knife, making sure all the doors and windows are locked, and trying to text 911. Crispian's a little amazed by it.
"I've never seen you act like this before."
"Well, it's a unique situation." He'd be even more impressed if he saw what happened in the kitchen, when an attacker punches through the window and grabs Erin. She uses her knife to stab the tiger-masked man's arm and pin it to the wall, but as she's looking for something to finish the job with, he manages to get away. If Erin's on one end of the keeping-it-cool spectrum, Aubrey's on the opposite, so distraught that Paul has to take her upstairs and put her to bed. Yeah, good luck having sweet dreams after seeing your daughter's throat open like a Ziploc bag. She doesn't actually have to worry about all that though, since from under the bed comes a wolf-masked invader. She notices him in the room just in time for him to raise his machete and slash it down on her, giving us a grade-A Barbara Crampton scream. When the rest of the family runs upstairs, they enter the room to find her dead on the bed, machete lodged deep into her skull for the fifth kill of the movie. I think Wolf Mask should copyright that font, it's perfect for bloody messages on the wall! Paul is obviously real messed up over his wife's death, so Kelly does the decent thing and covers up her body. Then she checks under the bed for monsters and finds a giant, loud jump scare as Wolf Mask appears. This freaks her out so much, she runs straight out of the house. Drake tries to follow, but gets his quarrel caught on the garrote wire, causing him to pull the bolt out of his back... ...and then faint from blood loss, or shock, or whatever. Kelly runs through the woods and doesn't notice when she runs past an attacker in a lamb mask. She exits frame left, pursued by a Lamb. She gets to Erik's house, and since she's a BIG Dwight Tilly fan she wants in on his one-man jam sesh. Little does she know he's just a corpse on a couch. Before she can figure it out, she turns around and gets punched by Lamb Mask through the window. It's actually kind of a mean-spirited scene here that doesn't sit entirely well with me, as Kelly tries to crawl away and is casually pursued by the assailant. He allows her to discover Erik's body before slamming her through a glass table, then is all like... "Now watch this drive!" and hacks into Kelly's skull. She's our sixth victim of the film, and at this point the bodies are coming at a pretty steady rate. Lamb Mask takes a breather next to his pal dead Erik in one of my favorite shots of the movie, since it looks like it could be the start to a really fucked up beer commercial. Back at the house, they drag Drake back inside and Crispian agrees to make a run for it to a place he can safely call the cops from. He and Erin share a goodbye kiss and then he hacks away the garrote wire and runs off. Erin takes charge once more, directing Felix and Zee to help her move Drake's body behind some curtains... ...and shooting down Felix's idea to hide in the basement. "Basement's a bad idea, they could just pour gas down the stairs and throw in a match." She also boils some water for later use and grabs a handful of culinary weapons for everyone. A crash through the window causes her to drop them all, though, so she's unarmed when Tiger Mask invades the house with an axe in hand. He swings it down at her, but she dodges it and fights back with a foot to the crotch... ...then immediately grabs a meat tenderizer and hits him with it in the back of his knee. Then, guys, Erin just goes fuckin' HAM on this asshole, beating him in the back of the head until he's down... ... and then doing what we ALWAYS want our horror movie characters to do, and making SURE he's dead for real by tenderizing his skull into a little meat patty, extra rare. It's absolutely brutal and kind of a turning point for this movie, as the viewer and the other characters realize just how formidable Erin's going to be. She rips off the tiger mask to reveal the face of screenwriter Simon Barrett, but the characters don't know that of course, and say they've never seen this guy before. Meanwhile, Paul has realized that whoever killed Aubrey is still in the house. So he heads upstairs armed with a knife to extract some justice. When Felix comes upstairs to check on him, Wolf Mask comes from behind and slits Paul's throat with a machete. Paul stumbles around, gagging on his wound and reaching out to a disgusted-looking Felix for help... ...before finally falling to the ground and bleeding out to death, staring up at Felix and Zee as he dies. They're pretty impassive about his death--about as impassive as Wolf Mask when he walks up next to them and stands there. "Really? You had to do that right in front of me?" Turns out Felix and Zee are working with the killers, a fun twist to the movie that makes a rewatch really interesting as you start to read into all the looks they give each other. Meanwhile, Lamb Mask discovers Tiger Mask's body. He starts huffing and puffing and blowing the table over, which is definitely not appropriate for his mask. How many times we gotta tell you to STAY in character, Lamb Mask?! Erin hears his temper tantrum from behind the door to the basement and arms herself with the tools she has on her. The Lamb Mask overhears her and starts
Jack Torrance-ing his way through the door. Drake stumbles back into the movie, distracting Lamb Mask long enough for Erin to make a move, running out and stabbing him in the back with a screwdriver. He's able to get away, running out the front door to safety, and Erin locks it behind him. Felix and Zee join them and say that Paul's just upstairs taking a nappy-nap. The four of them go the basement to get more tools as weapons, and as Erin shows Zee how to make some Home Alone traps... ...to ward off the invaders, Zee asks her what we're all wondering. "How did you learn all this stuff?"
"Well, I had kind of a weird childhood. I grew up on a survivalist compound." Cool. Yeah. Good enough for me! In the basement, Felix takes matters into his own hands by stabbing Drake in the stomach with a screwdriver. Felix takes the Canadian approach to murder.
"I'm sorry." But he's not too sorry to keep on stabbing Drake with a bunch of different screwdrivers. Not only is Felix a slimy little kin-slayer... ...he's also a big whiner while he does it. "Would you just die, already?! This is hard enough for me!" With over half a dozen tools in his torso, Drake does his lil' bro a solid and grants him his request, collapsing to the ground for Kill Number Nine. Fun fact: Drake was played by Joe Swanberg, another director who's worked with all these guys a lot, including a segment in 'VHS.' Looks like Zee wants to get in on the murder action, too, raising one of those boards up to hit Erin with... ...but Erin turns around before she can seal the deal. Erin then goes upstairs to check on Paul and finds him dead with an axe in his chest. Wolf Mask tries to sneak up on her with a machete. Nice try dawg, but it ain't gonna work! She chucks her tenderizer at him, and when she misses, gets straight the fuck out of there by jumping through the second-story window. This chick is unstoppable, yo! Even with a giant glass shard in her leg, she manages to get up and run to safety in the woods... ...where she hides behind a tree and pulls the shard out in a kind of beautiful shot. She notices Lamb Mask before he can get a crossbow shot off, so she manages to dodge the bolt and run off as he reloads. She gets back inside and hides behind the curtains to put a tourniquet around her leg. Lamb Mask pursues her, and is smart enough to peek inside before entering, seeing one of the boards Erin placed down as a trap. But he doesn't see the second board she's placed closer to the window, so he steps right onto it, impaling his foot with a nail and howling in pain. Again, very unlike a lamb. Damn it, man! We've got plenty more people who will do this job and
-stay in character-! The bastards upstairs hear his ruckus and Felix sends Wolf Mask down to inspect. "I believe this is what I'm paying you for." Seems like he might be having some buyer's remorse. But Zee comforts him and then tries to get freaky. "I want you to fuck me on this bed next to your dead mom." "What? Why would you even say something like that?!" Zee gets mad 'cuz Felix's Tinder profile definitely said he was INTO fucking next to his dead mom. Just goes to show you can never trust guys on a dating app, Zee! Felix goes downstairs and yells at the remaining attackers about how they're doing a shit job, since he had to stab his own brother to death. Erin overhears, so at least now she knows what's going on here. Lamb Mask claps back at Felix, saying that Tiger Mask was HIS brother. Felix chooses the perfect words to sympathize with him: "She really fucked him up good, huh?" In the middle of gasping for breath, Felix promises he'll up his payment to half a million for Lamb Mask... ...and 300k for Wolf Mask, and points out the only way he can pay them is if he survives and gets his inheritance. Which was the whole plan here in the first place. "You two BETTER be getting enough money to pay us!" "Would I be doing this if I wasn't?!" Just then, Erin's phone goes off because of an emergency message from 911, and Wolf Mask says he'll take care of it. When he opens the curtains she jabs him in the throat and runs away, causing all the other assholes to give chase. But she tricks them after running out the front door by immediately going back inside the house through an open window... ...so when Felix, Zee, and Wolfie run off after her through the forest, they don't know they're on a wild goose chase. Lamb Mask lags behind the others though, and notices the open window. As he peeks inside to see what's going on, Erin stabs him in the head with a knife. He falls to the ground dead, no double-tap from Erin required. And honestly, I feel like Erin's over the hump here. I think Lamb Mask was the scariest of all the assailants. Actually, I don't think she has anything to worry about, judging by that bad-ass shot of her standing in the window. She sets up a trap in the doorway that'll cause the axe to swing into whoever opens the front door. Kind of a bummer then, when Wolf Mask enters through the trap-free window. Erin sees him and runs off, escaping into the basement, where she takes a log and knocks out all the lights down there. When Wolf follows, she distracts him by setting up a camera to repeatedly flash, blinding him as he approaches it. She jumps out and beats him to death with the log, which we mostly hear since we can only see during the burst of light from the camera. A fun and artful way to capture another kill. When Erin goes back upstairs, Felix, now armed with the crossbow, takes his shot but misses. He and Zee are looking to finish this whole thing off, so she takes the crossbow with malevolent glee... ...while he goes to his trunk to turn off the cellphone jammer and grab a knife. Stabby stabby! Zee tries to be sneaky, but Erin ambushes her and gets her in a headlock, or some other technical term that I'm sure people will yell at me for not using. When Felix rushes in to save Zee, Erin uses Splash!...It's not very effective. "It's not even hot, you dumb bitc--oof!" Erin uses the pot to beat down Zee and kicks a door into Felix's head... ...but while she's strangling Zee with her bare hands, Felix is able to get back up and stab her in the back. Erin turns around and busts a blender pitcher over his face... ...then slams the blender blade into the top of his head and plugs that bad boy in for a super unique and memorable kill... ...straight-up puree-ing Felix's skull and brain meats. Who wants a Felix shake? Before Zee can properly recover from her partial asphyxiation, Erin takes the knife out of her back, and... ...with extra points for flourish, slams it into the top of Zee's skull, killing her and finally ridding herself of these shitty, entitled brats once and for all. Hey, at least the knife handle is black, Zee. It still kind of goes with your whole aesthetic. With Erin's safety finally guaranteed, she takes a well-deserved breather between the two corpses. Erin sees Felix's phone ring and answers it without saying a word. On the other end is Crispian, who asks if the job is over yet and apologizes for leaving earlier... ...saying he's not good with blood and couldn't handle it when shit started to get real. So yeah, turns out Crispian was in on it, too. Another fun little twist. He thinks the silence is just Felix being pissed, so he comes back inside through the window to see what's going on. Erin confronts him outright, and when he asks where Felix is, she tells him. "I stuck a blender in his head and killed him." "Oh...okay." He seems cool with that, because now he'll get all the inheritance. He assures Erin that they never meant to kill her, because she would be the witness who could attest to everything that happened... ...but then she just HAD to go and mess it up! "How were we supposed to know that you were...really good at killing people?" He promises her a well-off life together, free of student loan debt, but she's not sold and stabs him in the neck with a knife. He looks up at her with his whiny little frowny face and she stabs him once more, right in the eye!, for another gnarly kill in this blood-tastic movie. Immediately after Crispian's down, Erin gets shot. Turns out the cops finally got her message and showed up to the house. But she's still alive and tries to yell for the cop not to come inside, but it's too late. He trips the trap and an axe swings down for the last kill of the movie. The internet is telling me the cop's name is Officer Trubiano, and since the internet never lies, I'll just go with it. His death is off-screen, since the movie immediately cuts to a blood-splattered title screen before rolling credits to a cover of "Looking for the Magic." Now obviously I'm a huge fan of this movie, and hopefully it has enough to satisfy everyone, even those of you... ...who are here mostly for high body counts, because there were plenty of bodies to count. How many? Let's find out and get to the numbers. ...Oh. It's this way, sorry. Fifteen people die in 'You're Next,' literally every single character in the movie besides Erin, who actually claimed half the kills. Of the victims ten were men and five were women, meaning twice as many dudes got killed as ladies. With a run-time of 94 minutes, we wound up with a kill on average every 6.27 minutes, a pretty speedy rate. I'll give the Golden Chainsaw for Coolest Kill to Felix. So many kills were gory, but this one was the most unique, and you know what? Fuck Felix! Dull Machete for Lamest Kill will go to the movie's first kill, Thalia, who was killed off screen in a way that I can't even fully make out. And that's it! 'You're Next' was released in 2011 and received mostly positive critical acclaim. No sequel to this one, so next week we're on to 'The Mist,' which a lot of you have requested, so get ready for that! Until then, I'm James A. Janisse, this has been the Kill Count! Hey everybody, thanks a lot for watching my Kill Count on 'You're Next.' I want thank some of my Patrons, like Nicki Shone, Mario Godoy, and Paul Bartel. You guys like what I got going on over here? We've got a little blender, a little meat tenderizer--gonna tenderize your skull! Haha! Just kidding. Next week is 'The Mist,' and if you haven't seen that, I really think you should watch it before watching the Kill Count. In any case though, thank you so much for watching. This has been a very exciting six months!
