You're Next

In case you haven't actually taken a look at my profile picture and you just think that I am randomly racist against black people, I’m going to let you in on a little secret; I am black! (gasp) “A Black Sheriff?!?!” “He’s black?!?!” Yes, so I feel I can take certain liberties when it comes to making fun of our culture, stereotypes, or other people’s ignorance. But some people simply don’t get my jokes or even know that I’m kidding. I was out having drinks with two tattooed covered friends, neither of which are black, and the subject of fake tattoo sleeves came up. In case you don’t know what these are, they are basically leggings for your arms that look like tattoos. And apparently someone had gone up to one of my friends and thought that their tattoos were in fact one of these fake sleeves that you could buy. They started rubbing their arm to see if it would come off and needless to say, my friend was annoyed. Well me being me(I have no tattoos btw), instantly spoke up and said “Yeah well some white kid came up to me once and started rubbing my skin to see if this would come off! He was pretty disappointed as well.”  There was dead silence followed by blank stares as I was pointing to my skin color. This isn’t the first time that people haven’t gotten my humor and it certainly won’t be the last but after seeing You’re Next, I now know how they feel. This horror flick feels so esoteric that if you are in on it, you will absolutely love it! But if you are like me, you’ll leave wondering why you weren’t out at the bars trying to make girls laugh with your Blazing Saddles jokes.  And yes I’m single, go figure.

The plot is pretty thin at best. The story is about Crispian and his new girlfriend Erin heading out to the country for his parent’s anniversary. This will be her first time meeting his family and apparently they haven’t been together in one place for a long time. So naturally some tension and unresolved issues arise. But right as the situation is about to boil over, an arrow enters the dining room and kills one of Crispian’s sister’s boyfriend; and then all hell breaks loose. These men with Halloween masks do everything they can to enter the house in an attempt kill everyone there. Just the night before, they had killed their neighbors and left a warning written in blood for the yet deceased that read “You’re Next”.

It’s an ok set up for a horror flick but obviously far from original. The highlights are that the very first scene immediately takes care of the obligatory boob shot and there happens to be plenty of blood and gore in the film. The problem is that if you’re going to have senseless violence and lots it (you know by now that I’m a big fan of that) then it at least has to be fun/funny or really scary. It can’t just be there for the sake of being there, otherwise you’re just making Saw Seven…Thousand!!! The movie has a few jumpy parts but it’s not even remotely scary and the stupid wannabe Drive score certainly doesn’t help matters. 80’s synth pop before a big battle or knife scene only works if you're Michael Jackson and Wesley Snipes in the Bad video. Some of the humor is ok but they tried way too hard to be edgy. There is one scene where a girl is trying to seduce her boyfriend and says to him “hey, let’s have sex next to your dead mother”, who’s head was split open next to them on the bed. Clearly the writers were trying to make us laugh in horror but it just came across as too over the top.

The only reason I was able to make it through this film was the fact that Erin turned out to be a badass but if I want to see a boring movie with a hot girl that can kick ass, I’ll just watch Tomb Raider again. And no it has nothing to do with the fact that Angelina Jolie has triple d’s in it…ok maybe a little. This movie is WEAK and should be avoided.