There's no doubt that 2013's You're Next owes much of its success to Scream. Despite Neve Campbell quitting the ongoing franchise, it continues to be an inspiration for slasher films that care about comedy as much as they do jump scares. While some horror films actually aim to hit you in the heart, You're Next isn't afraid of making the audience laugh.
While Jordan Peele excelled at this in his groundbreaking flick, Get Out, director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett wanted You're Next to simultaneously maintain all that gory goodness throughout. Given its relative box-office success and subsequent cult following, there's no question that it succeeded.
In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Simon, Adam, and the producers of the film discussed the film's origin as well as its sadly relatable true meaning.
Will There Be A You're Next 2?
As far as home invasion movies go, You're Next is pretty freaking terrifying. While the film features a predominately wealthy cast of characters, the idea of having your house taken over by a group of masked evil-doers is something that can strike terror in the hearts of basically anybody.
It's also a very simple concept for a horror film. As pointed out by Bloody Disgusting, it's the execution of the film (as well as its deeper meaning) that makes the film so effective.
Although, it could've been far more effective had the film been released immediately after garnering significant buzz at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. Instead, it wasn't theatrically released for a whopping two years. The result of this decision was a lower box office than was hoped for. Even with its cult status, there remains no chance of a sequel, according to Movie Web.
The Origin Of You're Next
Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett came up with the idea for You're Next alongside the film's producers Jess and Keith Calder, as well as others, over dinner.
According to their fantastic interview with Bloody Disgusting, each of these filmmakers shared the feeling that the tone of horror films had changed. Aside from the Scream franchise, almost every other movie in the genre was dark and depressing. But they wanted to make a "fun" horror film. Something with energy and even some laughter.
"Horror movies can not just be about all the horrible things that the bad guys are doing, but also the amazing things that the heroes are doing to fight back," producer Keith Calder said to Bloody Disgusting.
Keith claimed the main influences for the film weren't actually horror films, they were stories like Die Hard, Aliens, and Home Alone.
"Over the course of that meal, we realized what a shared sensibility we had for horror, film, and influences," Keith continued. "We also had a shared sense of humor and approach to how we thought movies should be made."
This was a unifying feeling. Each of them wanted to dwell in the free-spirited energy that tends to come with low-budget filmmaking. Therefore, they were able to experiment. Not just with how they actually made the movie but with the tone from a structural perspective.
The meeting was, perhaps, the most inspirational for writer Simon Barrett, who told Bloody Disgusting that he wrote the script "incredibly quickly".
"I just knew how I wanted it to end and kind of reverse-engineered it from there," Simon explained to Bloody Disgusting. "I was pulling from Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’ and the screwball comedy, as well as a lot of different ideas based on what Adam had thought we should make next. It turned out to be something that did work out better than we could have expected."
What Was The Point Of You're Next?
Every great movie, including those in the horror genre, works because of a deeper meaning. Usually, it's a hidden allegory that only the most astute viewers will pick up on. In the case of You're Next, the true meaning of the film isn't all that hard to spot. But it's effective because it was authentic to the lives of the filmmakers.
"I think [director] Adam [Wingard] and I were way ahead of our peers in our willingness to talk openly about being very poor," Simon Barrett said to Bloody Disgusting of the film's true meaning.
"Everyone we knew was kind of broke, and it felt really relatable 一 the income inequality in America. I wanted to set that up, and then try to pay it off in a way that was more in the tradition of a screwball comedy, where each character in the family has their own kind of motivations, then people turn out to be different than you would assume they would be."
Simon went on to say that he wanted the villains to have motivations that reflected this theme.
"I thought if we kept bringing up specific amounts of money, it would really call attention to that. We also focused on the notion that the father made his money through working for a defense contractor, and the guys his children ultimately hire to come after him are veterans of one of our recent skirmishes."
The idea was that these themes were (and remain) very much part of the culture of America, whether people wanted to admit it or not.
"[But] not a lot of people commented on any of that stuff," Simon admitted. "To me, the movie clearly has a large theme of people being different than you would assume."
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