I was a nervous kid. I had a knack for finding ways of being afraid. If I rode a bike, I could fall off. If I climbed a tree, I could topple out. Dogs might bite and trying to make new friends might end in lonely heartbreak. If I took a risk… well, you know the drill.
However, towering high above my other, admittedly more trivial fears was a fear far greater than the rest. It stemmed from a recurring nightmare that plagued my childhood. In it, I woke up in the pitch blackness of my room at night to the terrifying sound of loud, chaotic hammering against the walls. I followed the pounding noise to our living room only to find the remainder of my family sitting on the couch motionless and staring dead-eyed at the front door. As if I had no other choice, I moved to the door to open it and found a faceless man, brandishing a knife and coming toward me.
The dream always ended the same way: the man swung the knife at my head and I woke up in a cold sweat, feeling the spot on my skull where the knife should have connected.
The visceral experience of my imagination’s horrific fantasy aside, I was terrified of what was waiting just outside my window in the darkness. The mere idea of some unknown assailant tearing into my safe haven was enough to throw me into fits. I couldn’t even watch Problem Child (1990) on TNT without getting freaked out by the idea of some stranger kidnapping a kid, even if that kid caused way more trouble than the criminal in question.
Over the years I managed to shed myself of much of the fear that dogged me as a kid, most notably with the help of the horror genre. Horror offered a unique and cathartic way of exercising these fears safely, facing the terrors of my mind’s eye through the creative endeavors of other, like-minded visionaries. But, even still, regardless of how many years had passed, nothing cut me to the quick like home invasion horror.
Ils (2005), aka Them, was my first foray into the subgenre and taught me how uniquely unnerving the onscreen realization of my youthful night terrors could be. The Strangers (2008) further solidified that notion, proving to me that there is little in film that terrifies me more than an anonymous outsider standing in the shadows as an unsuspecting innocent tends to their dishes. There was simply nothing scarier to me than the idea of being at home alone while lacking the knowledge that you are anything but.
Then came You’re Next (2011). Home invasion, certainly, but with a sense of humor. Coming in the wake of self-aware horror such as Hatchet (2006) and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006), not to mention right alongside meta-masterpiece Cabin in the Woods (2011), it’s a film that adapted the terrifying tropes while allowing the viewer to have a bit of fun deconstructing them. Best of all, at its core is Erin, a woman who is not only capable of keeping her cool in a rough situation based on past experiences, but proves to be far more dangerous than any interloper she might cross paths with.
Watching the film was an oddly cathartic experience for me. It played to my general proclivity toward horror and gore that goes so over-the-top it breaches the ridiculous and, as if that weren’t enough, it offered a character who could actually take on those terrifying, animal-masked prowlers and emerge victorious. Her determination, physical prowess, and raw willingness to do what needed to be done felt more in line with what one might expect out of a film’s villain which is what made her presence as the protagonist in the narrative so refreshing.
While many scenes embody this aspect of the film and Erin’s character, particularly a brutal, blender-based example set during the finale, the simplest and most striking moment comes when Erin encounters one of the assailants and defeats them with the help of a meat tenderizer. Beginning by reinforcing the level of fear and intimidation a home invader naturally possesses and then allowing Erin to savagely strip the attacker of that power, the scene epitomizes why You’re Next is so different from other movies of its ilk.
From Simon Barrett’s razor-sharp screenplay to Adam Wingard’s intense and yet economic realization onscreen, the scene simultaneously embodies and subverts the home invasion subgenre, offering a path fraught with terror, mayhem and fun for even the most nervous kid around.
THE SCENE
Erin, Felix and Zee move Drake’s body. Erin decides to retrieve some cookware form the kitchen to use as possible weapons. On her way back, she is accosted by an invader through the dining room window. He knocks her to the floor and swings an axe down upon her head. She rolls out of the way and kicks him in the groin before striking his knee with a meat tenderizer. He falls and Erin stands, raising the tenderizer and slamming it down against his head. She hammers into him, again and again, until he is completely motionless. Felix and Zee stare in awe as Erin unmasks the marauder and asks if they know who he is. Felix notes that it’s difficult to tell and Erin thanks them sarcastically for “helping”. Together the three move on to look for the house’s patriarch.
THE SCRIPT
Excerpt taken from the script ‘YOU’RE NEXT’ written by Simon Barrett.
THE SCREEN
The opening to the scene and the screenplay follow a nearly identical trajectory. Erin, Zee, and Felix deposit Drake in the living room and then converse about their next steps. The conversation is depicted in close-ups, a simple shot-reverse-shot back and forth which speaks to the pragmatism of the dialogue as well as the filmmaking.
It’s the expressiveness of the characters that tells the story here. While the words speak to the debate of where to go and what to do next, it’s Erin’s decisiveness and certainty in the face of Felix and Zee’s distrustful anxiousness that foreshadows the outcome of the attack and the narrative at large.
Along those same lines, Erin leaves the conversation mid-thought, hurrying off to the kitchen to procure make-shift weapons. In the script, the opening moment lasts a bit longer, with Zee saying, “She’s… interesting” after Erin departs. The line is excised, presumably, for the very reason mentioned above: the characters don’t need words to express how they’re feeling in the moment, their expressions do that well enough.
A pot of boiling water introduces the viewer to the abandoned kitchen. In the film, the camera follows Erin entering the kitchen from the exterior of the house, watching her movements through the window that was broken earlier. The shot immediately conjures a feeling of vigilance in the viewer, suggesting that the camera might be the eyes of some faceless assailant.
The shot compliments the script well, as the words call for Erin to look up at the broken kitchen window and the patch of blood on the wall next to it and then, Erin considers it for a moment. The cinematography reverses in response to this, offering a POV shot from Erin’s perspective, hammering home the keen mindfulness that Erin possesses.
The image cuts back to the other room with a medium shot of Felix and Zee drawing the shades. In the script:
Erin strides into the front room. Her arms are filled with CUTLERY and a METAL MEAT TENDERIZER MALLET.
Erin walks with a purpose, not fearful but confident, providing direction as she goes. The words are cut off, however, as KELLY’S DEAD BODY smashes through the large windows to the side of Erin, as if thrown. In the film the events occur in rapid succession. The window breaks and Erin falls, the instruments in her grasp flying away from her. The camera cuts to a medium shot of Erin hitting the floor, a large knife bouncing across and out of the frame.
The image cuts and actions start to move in slow motion. The image follows Felix and Zee as they move out of the way and then cuts back to Kelly’s corpse in the window. A large black booted foot emerges over her lifeless form. Then, a medium close-up of the TIGER-MASKED MAN as he steps in, holding a large axe. The camera tracks up to a high angle as he stares down at Erin.
What was already an intimidating presence is amplified significantly by the decision to portray the entrance in slow-motion, feeding into the tropes of the subgenre and allowing the coming subversion to be all the more unexpected.
Still in slow motion, Erin rolls over and the man towers above her, a close up carrying the viewer to his axe as it swings down through the air to connect with Erin. Erin rolls out of the way and the axe strikes the floor. The slow-motion comes to an abrupt halt and as the world returns to normal speed, Erin kicks up hard into the man’s groin.
In the script there’s more of a struggle between the two before this happens. On the page Erin falls beneath the dining table, her arms curled up to protect her head and reaches for the closest KNIFE only to find it just out of reach. The man GRABS ONE OF HER ANKLES and DRAGS HER OUT, swinging his axe down at her. She dodges and rolls again, before finding herself in a position to fight back
The film streamlines the interaction, focusing less on the scene as a horror set-piece and more on the abilities and motivations of the characters. Onscreen, the sequence translates much stronger as a dissection of the home invasion horror movie given the speed and capacity Erin shows for appraising the situation and taking the most appropriate course of action from start to finish.
The man stumbles back, doubling over as he issues high-pitched pained sounds. His axe falls to the floor and his previous persona as an unidentifiable, terrifying force of nature is reduced to nothing more than that of a pathetically unprepared criminal.
In his moment of hesitation, Erin rolls to the side and grabs the METAL MEAT TENDERIZER MALLET off the floor.
Lying on her side, Erin swings the mallet, HARD, into the man’s KNEE.
The words and the screen resume synchronicity as Erin grabs the tenderizer and slams it against the man’s knee. He cries out louder than before and falls, now almost completely succumbing to Erin’s will. Erin rises and in a medium-wide shot moves quickly over to him, bringing the mallet down against his head with a sickening smack. The man’s screams grow increasingly more wild, desperate and pitiful.
The script describes this without emotion or distraction, laying out Erin’s process as though it were an instruction manual. Still, the viscera of the violence is present and the impact is clear, further solidifying Erin’s true identity and capabilities to the reader without need for explicit exposition.
The film realizes this with intensity and a dark sense of glee, following Erin as she approaches the whimpering man with the tenderizer once more. Her face is deadly and determined, anything but afraid. Without the veil of fear, it is, after all, just a man.
She cracks the mallet down again. Onscreen, his hands grasp at the air, his fingers twisted and tight while his screams die out and his body turns limp. The image cuts to a medium close up of the man on his knees. Erin swings the tenderizer again, causing the man to lose consciousness entirely and fall flat on his face, sprawled out on the wooden floor.
The screenplay called for Erin to hold the man’s head in place against the table and to hit him three times, caving in his skull. The film takes it further, pushing her retaliating attack against him into the realm of symbolic justice spanning across an entire subgenre of storytelling.
Erin moves to the body and hammers the tenderizer into the unmoving skull once more with a resounding wet splat. She swings the mallet down again and again, six more times, her breathing heavy from the force. The image cuts to Felix and Zee as she strikes the bloody mess three more times, their disturbed faces reflecting fear, certainly, but not of the dead man on the floor. Finally, the image lands on Erin again as the mallet hits the dead man for the tenth consecutive time.
The only excised bit of Erin’s raw, cold-blooded intensity from the script came after the hammering, when Zee asks if the man is dead. In response, Erin lifts the man’s head with both hands and braces her knee against his back, then pulls back his head, BREAKING HIS NECK. While perhaps cleaner and more mechanical in its execution on the page, the more carnal, instinctive methodology onscreen serves the same end with a little more of a grotesque flavor.
The moment concludes as Erin stares back up at Felix and Zee, not an ounce of remorse of her face. As in the script, Erin removes the man’s tiger mask and lifts him up by his collar asking, “Anyone know this guy?” Felix and Zee, awestruck, shake their heads at the average-looking man in his twenties. Again, as scripted, Felix mutters that “it’s kinda hard to tell” and Erin simply drops the body unceremoniously in response.
The remainder of the scene plays out as it does on the page with Felix offering comfort to Erin regarding Crispin that she neither asked for or accepts and landing on the question of where the house’s patriarch has gone off to. As the characters presumably hurry off to find the one missing from their ranks, its with a renewed sense of purpose and capability.
Masks come in many shapes and sizes, it would seem, and sometimes the ones that should be feared the most are not plastic exaggerations.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“The only way you can really deconstruct this type of movie,” director Adam Wingard said on his audio commentary track for You’re Next found on the Blu-ray disc, “is to sort of play by the rules a little bit.”
As a kid, my reoccurring dream regarding the preternaturally anonymous man storming my house in the middle of the night all but ensured a deeply rooted, lifelong fear of home invasion horror. As a nervous child to begin with, that nightly vision only stoked the already healthy flames of a gnawing terror which would follow me like a prowler in the night for many years to come.
Then came the horror genre, a cathartic way of experiencing, analyzing and, in some cases, exorcising my mental afflictions. Of course, home invasion horror stood out amongst the rest as being particularly terrifying, which is why I was so happy when I first watched You’re Next.
At once an embodiment of what makes its chosen subgenre so frightening and a sendup of those same thematic elements, the film is as fun as it is frightening and a great way to come to terms with a fear of what awaits you just outside in the darkness. Through its survivalist protagonist Erin, the film allows the viewer to expel their own dark desires against the sort of people who would put others through such discomfort and terror. Erin is anything but the victim, a hero in disguise that rises up and unmasks the faceless enemy, dethroning dread in the stead of self-preservation.
Actress Sharni Vinson cultivated Erin’s character through a multi-layered approach, ensuring that every act she took onscreen was informed by her complicated past. “It’s one thing to be taught how to do something,” she said on her audio commentary track found on the Blu-ray disc, “It’s another thing to have to do it.” In his commentary, screenwriter Simon Barrett described a similar approach when he was writing the script, “It was important for Erin to never act tough, she just had to be tough.”
The scene, like the movie at large, works because it subverts expectations. Simon Barrett continued in his commentary track, “this whole movie is trying to set up expectations… it starts off as a more conventional slasher and then switches it up.” Director Adam Wingard mirrored that sentiment in the commentary track, saying, “[sometimes] a new perspective is just as important as new material altogether.”
With an eye towards practicality, using live, on-set effects to bring the brutality and gore to life, the film achieves a level of absurdity that informs both the horror and the comedy. Every edit, every line of dialogue and every subtle glance serves the greater whole and encourages the viewer to think about what they’re watching. It’s not just about experiencing something unnerving, it’s about how the film recontextualizes those elements which normally only exist to frighten, providing them with new meaning.
There’s a power to something scary. Falling out of a tree can have dire repercussions, after all. And no one wants to find themselves alone in the world, without a friend or loved one to talk to. As far as what awaits you in the night beyond your living room window— well, anything might be out there.
I don’t know why my nightmare came into my life or why it is that it one day simply ceased to be. The machinations of the mind and what drives it are far beyond my comprehension. What I do know is that whether I was dreaming of it or not, the movie it created in my brain played on a loop during my waking hours long after it left my subconscious. And it was You’re Next that finally helped me to stare it down and provide a face to the featureless attacker that it featured. For once anonymity has a visage, well, its power seems far less absolute.
As a guy who was once a nervous kid, I will always be unnerved by the seemingly empty darkness just outside of my door. Home invasion horror will always get to me. But, thanks to You’re Next, I’ll take it all with a grain of salt and remember that intruders and mask-wearers are human. Not to mention, they do not come exclusively from the pitch blackness of night.
In the words of Simon Barrett, “[sometimes] the invasion comes from within the house.”
Not that you should be nervous or anything.
