I recently went to see
You’re Next, in which Ti West has a brief role. He seems to be pals with some members of the cast and crew (Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett and Joe Swanberg), as they've worked together on several other projects.
You're Next I didn't care for too much, since I felt that it was too much of a straightforward slasher devoid of any real horror. The more I think about it, though, the more I can't help but compare it to Ti West's excellent recent work,
The Innkeepers and
House of the Devil, and feel frustrated. The premise of
You're Next is a simple one -- domestic home invasion in the country -- that can be fertile ground for many scares, but nearly all of these opportunities are squandered by the filmmakers. I wish they had consulted with Mr. West more on set.
The reason I keep comparing these three films in my head is because one of the most prominent failures in
You're Next is something that Ti West did so beautifully in
The Innkeepers and
House of the Devil, which is to map out the single-setting interiors in which the bulk of the films take place. Look no further than the titles of West's last two features as evidence of their focus on interior spaces (and the people who occupy those spaces - more on that in a bit.) West edits the films in such a way that the viewer is left with a definite sense of a place.
To name a random example from The Innkeepers, when, towards the end of the film, Claire runs from the second floor of the inn to the third floor to check on the old man, enough shots are included so that the action feels continuous between the floors and so that the viewer can create a mental portrait of the surroundings.
In
You're Next, there is never this sort of continuity. There are no shots of hallways that serve to establish the relationship between rooms. The physical space surrounding the characters is treated merely as a background - all the viewer sees of the mansion is disjointed shots that do not add up to a logical environment. This was also the problem with West's first feature
The Roost, which takes place in a nonsensical barn maze.
With
The Innkeepers, this emphasis on place is especially important, because the central goal of the characters is to record audio and visual imprints of the inn and it's most famous resident before the building is torn down. "We gotta find some proof that Madeline O'Malley really exists before this place closes down, we have to. Imagine how she feels, being stuck here forever. We gotta get something on tape...it's like a moral imperative," Claire says excitedly near the start of the film. It's a line that one can imagine Alfred Hitchcock or Chris Marker relishing. Is it a coincidence that the ghost in the story is named Madeline, that name over which Marker has obsessed? "Thus one comes to call Madeleines all those objects, all those instants that can serve as triggers for the strange mechanism of Memory," writes Marker in his CD-ROM
Immemory.
West seems to have found a Madeleine in the Yankee Pedlar Inn (a real inn, by the way). He is not simply trying to tell a ghost story, but he is instead intent on capturing the atmosphere of this location at a particular point in time. The result is that the film is definitely a slow burner with an odd sense of humor. I could probably count on one hand the number of scares West attempts in the film, but each one is so much more effective as a result of the buildup.
The final scene in the basement still makes me panic after several viewings. It's no coincidence that this is the one area of the inn that West never fully reveals. Viewers are given just a few ultra-dark shots of the basement that leave it a space shrouded in mystery and fear. The result is that the terror is amplified in Claire's final scene, as she moves from a known, safe place (upstairs) to an unknown, dangerous place (the basement). I agree with domino that the final shot of the epilogue is unnecessary (it's the only cheap scare in the film), but it's not enough to destroy the genuinely haunting mood West creates with the rest of the film.
