Why isn’t there a studio releasing a blockbuster on Labor Day Weekend? My wife and I have been desperate to get out and see something, anything, but a OneDirection movie is the big release? Why is September the only month of the year where you can’t release a film? I get the kids go back to school, but they get Labor Day off too, so there’s no excuse for it. NONE! Sorry, sorry. I’m venting a little bit because of the lack of other options, and because I’ve seen everything else, I went and saw You’re Next (which-I might add-is running a 70% positive on Rotten Tomatoes).
You’re next is a home invasion thriller in which a family gathered for the parents’ 35th anniversary finds themselves under attack from men in animal masks. By the time the masked killers began cutting down family members, I was thoroughly rooting for them because this is possibly the douchiest family in movie history. I don’t know anyone who starts in this, but if they can have SAG cards, monkeys can have SAG cards. The dialogue was horrid, but the delivery was so bad, so sub-community theater that my audience was laughing at the film within minutes. In fact, had The World’s End not come out last week, this would be the funniest film of the year. The pathetic thing is, it really is trying not to be.
I’m not an easy scare at movies, but the category that’ll do it, is home invasion. The violation of your sanctuary by hostile forces. Obviously, just like different things are funny to different people, people’s scare buttons get hammered by different triggers. Over the last few years, Paranormal Activity 3, Sinister and-oh my sweet LORD-The Strangers, had me stalking my apartment with a butcher knife. This movie was trying to do The Strangers with the masks. It was trying to do (insert any horror movie here) with the “You’re Next” messages (WHICH HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE…..AT ALL!!!). It ends up being one of the worst, illogical, badly acted films I’ve seen in a theater. Period.
When the family’s initial herd gets culled by the masks and their stultifying idiocy, the movie pretty much turns into a combination of Home Alone and Die Hard because the killers didn’t count on the girlfriend meeting the family for the first time being an Australian survivalist. No, I’m explaining it better than the movie does, but feel free to be confused. She throws a wrench in the whole works by being alarmingly good at adapting to and killing threats in unique ways. She’s freaking John McClane without a Y chromosome. I will say of all the bad actors in the film….she was the best least good.
There’s a twist and some other stuff happens, but my audience was having a pretty decent time MST3King the film by that point. I haven’t been in a film where the audience turned on the movie since The Village. This is the kind of film you’d watch to make fun of how bad it is and I’m not doing it justice. It’s worse than I’m making it out to be. Just because Aussie Die Hard interested me briefly, it gets half a point, but this is still the lowest-reviewed film in KT history. STAY. AWAY.
0.5/10
Killing Time 