You're Next

Directed by Adam Wingard.

2011. Rated R, 95 minutes.

Cast:

Sharni Vinson

Nicholas Tucci

Wendy Glenn

A. J. Bowen

Joe Swanberg

Barbara Crampton

Rob Moran

Ti West

Some families can never sit down together and have a peaceful dinner. This is true for the Davison family. However, things are taken to a whole new level when arrows start flying in through the windows, killing one party guest. Yup, their already dysfunctional bunch is under siege by strangers outside the house . Of course, these strangers don't remain outside for long. While they're coming in, the Davisons are trying to get out. By the way, it's not just the Davisons. There's mom Aubrey (Crampton) and dad Paul (Moran), who own this beautiful home. Presumably, they are in their sixties. I'm judging by conversations that place the older kids near forty, if not beyond that age. If I went by mama's looks, I'd say she couldn't be their mother. Maybe she's a hot, milfy, slightly older sister. Yeah, I said that. Either roll your eyes or agree. Anyhoo, their three sons have all brought their girlfriends and their daughter has brought her boyfriend. In other words, we're nicely set up for a sizable body count. Oh, if you somehow didn't know this, the house is pretty secluded. The one neighbor and his barely legal girlfriend are in the movie for less time than Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett-Smith were in Scream 2. Their part of the story just doesn't unfold in public, the way that one did. They're also far less interesting, too. With them out of the way, home invasion madness ensues.

You're Next actually mixes its horror sub-genres. While home invasion is the dominant theme, it makes plenty of use of slasher flick tropes. For a long time, our intruders don't seem to want anything other than to kill the occupants of the house in what turns out to be "one by one" fashion. We also get a "final girl" out of the deal. I won't completely spoil it, but you'll probably figure out who that is rather quickly. She'll be the one kicking bad guy ass. And she does it in gloriously gruesome style.

Speaking of gruesome, one of the draws of the movie is its gore. This isn't some deep, psychological horror pulling our most submerged fears to the surface. This is a study in how much damage can be done to the human body using whatever you can find around the house. Amazingly, this includes a blender. No screwing around with atmosphere, here. It's all about the blood and guts. At this, the movie does a very nice job. A number of scenes induce a wince or two from the viewer. The most memorable of them includes that aforementioned blender.

Sidenote (minor spoiler alert, too): The first dinner guest that buys it is played by critically acclaimed horror director Ti West. Well, he's not acclaimed by this critic, whatsoever. Plenty of people were singing his praises for House of the Devil and The Innkeepers. I hate both movies with unbridled passion. Even though I would be a very happy man if he never gets to yell "action" ever again, I don't really want him dead. Still, I'd be lying if I said seeing him get killed in this movie didn't bring a smile to my face. If this makes me evil, so be it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Despite what I've just said, the plot is not wholly irrelevant. There really is an air of mystery to it all. We really have no idea what's going on for a long stretch of time. Fortunately, the other stuff is interesting enough to hold us. When things start clearing up, it makes perfect sense. There isn't a ton to comprehend, but what's here works. It does so in a way that makes us cheer for our heroine that much more. Honestly, by that point, we're already on her side, but when we figure out what's happening we really start rooting for her.

This is not a movie that's re-inventing the horror wheel by any stretch of the imagination. It does approach it with a sly and twisted sense of humor. The story is functional and the kills are inventive. There is enough suspense to keep us wondering during any down time. The acting and the dialogue are all adequate for a horror flick. The special fx bringing all the mutilation to life are all practical from what I can tell and very well done. Everything leads to an intense final few minutes. You're Next is just a bloody, fun ride. Bloody in the literal sense, that is.

Drinking Buddies

Directed by Joe Swanberg.

2013. Rated R, 90 minutes.

Cast:

Olivia Wilde

Jake Johnson

Anna Kendrick

Ron Livingston

Jason Sudeikis

Ti West

Kate (Wilde) and Luke (Johnson) work at the local brewery. After a long, but usually fun day at work, they tend to head down to the nearest bar with a number of their other co-workers and drink lots of their own product. It is painfully obvious the two have a thing for each other. The issue here is two-fold: 1) Each is involved in a serious relationship with someone else, and 2) Neither of them will own up to how they feel about the other. Instead, they flirt endlessly. They do it that way people do when they have a really strong connection. Of course, they think it is mere friendship. So Kate thinks it's no big deal to invite Luke and his girlfriend Jill (Kendrick) up to her boyfriend Chris' (Livingston) beach house for the weekend. They accept. Life rolls on from there.

When I say 'life rolls on,' that's probably the best compliment I can give this movie. It's a true slice-of-life flick in every sense of the term. There really is no plot. Everything about our leads are just the facts of who they are, not set ups for some grand character arc. Finally, Drinking Buddies doesn't end so much as it just stops. When it does, I wouldn't blame anyone who throws their arms up and says "WTF!" when the final credits roll. I suspect that's what's behind the disparity between how critics view this movie and how normal folks see it. Critics have praised it while audiences are rather lukewarm toward it. The things it doesn't have are the things we've been trained to expect from our films. Without those things we're left with a feeling of uncertainty about what we just watched. A movie lacking a definitive beginning, middle, and end might not immediately make sense to us.

Enjoying DB requires a willingness to take it on its own terms and, perhaps, actually thinking about it afterwards. That's because we may have to sort some things out. It does what I often knock other movies for not doing. It shows, not tells. Counter intuitive to that sentiment, this movie is much more noun than verb. It is something that is, not something that does. We're used to our visual media "doing" for us. It sticks around until the bad guy is caught and the hero gets the girl. Little to no effort is required of us. Therefore, most of us don't have the energy for a movie with a figurative test at the end. I like this movie. That's not to say I'm smarter than people who don't. I'm just more willing to put in the work necessary to appreciate it.

I feel like I've rambled quite a bit without saying much about the actual film. There really are reasons to enjoy it as it goes along. Right away, it positions itself as a dramedy. It makes us laugh, but that's not necessarily it's aim. It's more about exploring the relationship between Kate and Luke. Whatever drama or humor that comes out of this is organic to the human experience, not gags or overly contrived melodrama. To their credit, our stars are an immense help in this area. Both Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson deliver completely natural performances. Wilde is particularly good. Her best acting is done by her eyes during pauses in dialogue. When she speaks, she feels like a woman we might know. The same is true for Johnson. Well, he sounds like a man we might know, not a woman. You understand. Through the two of them, we sense these are people who are aware of their feelings, but struggling mightily not to act upon them. Immediately, we start wondering "will they," or "won't they." This uncertainty drives the movie. Our curiosity happily rides along on this train. I like where it drops us off. I'm not sure you will.

V/H/S

Directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, “Radio Silence.”

2012. Rated R, 116 minutes.

Cast:

Calvin Reeder

Adam Wingard

Kentucker Audley

Sarah Byrne

Hannah Fierman

Mike Donlan

Frank Stack

A group of wayward twenty-somethings are having fun filming themselves attacking women in parking garages and forcefully exposing their breasts to the camera. Their mothers must be proud. Anyhoo, sales of these videos aren't as lucrative as they’d like. One of them knows about a VHS tape they would be paid handsomely for. Of course, they have to break into someone’s house and steal it. Once there, they discover a dead body and an extensive library of unmarked videotapes to rummage through, spread throughout the house. Of course, only one of these bozos has enough sense to press play on the VCR, even though the TV is already on. While his buddies are digging around in the various piles of tapes, he sits and watches. We watch along with occasional breaks to see how the boys are doing.

Essentially, V/H/S is a collection of vignettes whose only link is that they appear to be on the same tape and that one of the characters is watching them. On top of that, what’s going on in the house where he and his buddies are amounts to another vignette. Therefore, looking for a unifying theme is pointless, unless you count the fact that they’re all twisted. At that, each succeeds. To achieve this we get a vampire (something like a vampire), aliens, and “regular” folk.

Surprisingly, almost all of the shorts work wonderfully. None of them have a plot, per se, they’re more like little slices of the end of life. Very bloody, violent ends. As stated, they’re mostly bent on making you use some variation of the phrase “that’s messed up,” and they do.

Perhaps most notable is that it manages to put a new spin on the found footage sub-genre. Like all the rest of these type of movies, it’s heavily influenced by The Blair Witch Project.” It marries this with its love for other anthologies to give us something that feels fresh and completely unrestrained. Each vignette stretches long enough so we’re never quite sure where things are going. When they get there, our inner sadists will be quite pleased.

MY SCORE: 7/10

The Innkeepers

Directed by Ti West.

2011. Rated R, 101 minutes.

Cast:

Sara Paxton

Pat Healy

Kelly McGillis

Alison Bartlett

Jake Ryan

Lena Dunham

George Riddle

Brenda Cooney

John Speredakos

An old, stale hotel on the last weekend it will ever be in business, with only a few people around, seems as good a place as any for a good haunted house flick. ENGH! Wrong answer. At least in this case. I’m not sure there are any right answers in the 100 plus minutes we spend in this drab setting. By drab, I don’t mean anything remotely “haunting”, either. I just mean “bleh.”

Things start well enough, I guess. As mentioned, the Yankee Pedlar Inn is going out of business and the owner is wisely on vacation elsewhere. This means we’re stuck with the only two dweebs who work here, Clare (Paxton) and Luke (Healy). For some strange reason, they think they’re Akroyd and Murray back in 1984. Get it? Sigh…kids these days. They think they’re Ghostbusters! He-dweeb spends most of every day tap, tap, tapping on his laptop, designing his website based on “real” paranormal activity. She-dweeb mostly just believes whatever flies out of his pie-hole and agrees to try and record the ghosts in the hotel. By record, I mean audio only, not video. Huh? Whatever. Legend has it that, way back when, a bride hanged herself in one of the rooms because her brand new hubby abandoned her. Instead of using her apparently active afterlife to find that bum and haunt his ass, she knocks around the Inn occasionally going “Woooohhhh” and scaring the guests.

Hey, I've tortured myself once by watching this movie and twice by sitting down to write this review. Consider this your chance to stop reading now. You already know how I feel about this so-called film. Therefore, I’m going to do something constructive while I bang out a few more paragraphs. I’m attempting to take the art of onomatopoeia to new heights, just like this, boom. Didn't you notice ENGH? Bleh? Okay, at least you understood boom. No? Sigh. Grab a dictionary and look up onomatopoeia. Damn, you’re lazy. Just click here. See what I did there? I’m sorry, you’re not lazy, unless you are…screw it.

We left off on guests, right? Hmph, the only paying ones are a lady and her son. We learn she’s pissed at her hubby and punishing him by spending the weekend away. Ha! Judging from her demeanor I’ll bet he’s not feeling so punished. As for the boy, probably about 8, he gets a treat when he gets to see she-dweeb in her undies. Boing! Good for you, child actor. Now, don’t do drugs. Unfortunately for she-dweeb, after a frightening moment (for her anyway) sends her running to he-dweebs room she sees him in his undies. Ladies, trust me when I say this: gag!

Anyhoo, the lady and her son leave and an alcoholic, former actress, current medium arrives. Every haunted house flick has to have one of those. She’s in town for a people-who-talk-to-dead-people convention but of course, gets pulled into the goings on at the hotel. Right before just about every action she knocks back one of those small airline bottles of booze. A little later, some random old dude shows up and yes, he’ll become part of the happenings, also.

What are these happenings, you ask? Whenever she-dweeb is alone (they man the front desk in shifts), she starts hearing stuff knock or clank or wind howling or the piano in the lobby starts playing by itself. At some point during all the commotion, she yanks the recording equipment off the desk and mostly captures herself whimpering. Nice. She finally gets a noise other than from her own body, screams, runs and tells he-dweeb or drunk psychic and then…nothing. Between these scenes, our dweebs have completely inane conversations. Seriously, it’s like “Hey, look at my website and ghosts are real blah blah blah.”

“I totally believe you ‘cuz sometimes people see stuff and blah blah blah.”

Okay, movie, either kill them now or kill me. I’m begging. Hear that? That’s the sound of brain cells oozing out of my ear, splashing to their death on my shoulder so they no longer have to listen to this dreck. I should have known better. Our director, Ti West, also helmed the equally bad and equally overrated House of the Devil. If you see this man anywhere near a movie set, please have the nearest person call 911 then physically restrain him until the cops arrive.

Regardless of my feelings on the matter, The Innkeepers drones on. Sigh. You know the drill. Eventually, he-dweeb picks up on the fact strange crap is really happening and drunk psychic says ‘get out.’ I’m paraphrasing, of course. As for the random old dude, I’ll let you figure it out. Will she-dweeb and he-dweeb escape the dead bride? Will you give a flying fox fleeing from a flock of pheasants? Dun dun dun DUNNNNN!