This year, for 31 Days of Horror, we’re featuring our favourite horror films released between 1996 and 2013. This isn’t some random era we’ve chosen; rather, it’s one that is covered in writer Clark Collis’ recently released book, Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie. For horror fans and cinephiles alike, it’s a great look at the resurrection of horror into mainstream cinemas, thanks to franchises like Scream and The Conjuring, artists like James Wan and Leigh Whannell, and the late, great Wes Craven, as well as the illustrious production company Blumhouse. You can read our review of the book here,
Today, we’re thrilled to have a guest post from Clark Collis himself!
My new book Screaming and Conjuring tracks the resurrection and rise of the horror film from 1996’s genre-reviving Scream to 2013’s The Conjuring. While this history does cover the movies released during the next dozen years in an extended epilogue, I was determined to conclude the main text with James Wan’s ghost tale, a beloved and terrifying hit which led to horror’s first $2 billion film franchise. The one major exception I made was for You’re Next, which was released the month after The Conjuring. This was partly because the much-delayed film should have come out long before Wan’s blockbuster and partly for the selfish reason that it is among my favourite all-time movies.
You’re Next was directed by the then-unknown Adam Wingard (later to oversee Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire) from a script by his longtime creative partner Simon Barrett. The film details a night of terror during which the extended Davison clan (parents, four adult children, and the kids’ assorted partners) are attacked by animal mask-wearing home-invaders at the family’s remote house. Wingard orchestrates the film’s violence with brutal and inventive aplomb – you’ll never look at a food processor in the same way after watching this film – and Barrett’s screenplay offers a lean, surprise-filled masterclass in genre-screenwriting. The film also boasts an array of terrific performances from, among others, Barbara Crampton, Amy Seimetz, A.J. Bowen, the late Nicholas Tucci, and Sharni Vinson, whose character Erin is arguably one of the cinema’s greatest, and certainly one of the most lethal, final girls ever. But the movie’s trump card is its darkly comic sensibility, a vein of deadpan humour signposted by an opening scene in which lovers played by Larry Fessenden and Kate Lyn Sheil are slaughtered as The Dwight Twilley Band’s power pop track “Looking for the Magic” blasts out from the CD player.
Developing the script, Barrett and Wingard were influenced by Wes Craven’s original Scream and, in particular, its initial sequence, which sees Ghostface telephonically tormenting and then killing Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker. As Barrett told me when I interviewed him for Entertainment Weekly ahead of You’re Next arriving in cinemas, “That movie, especially its opening scene, walks a really fine [line] between being intense and scary but also having a pressure release valve, which is a really vicious, fun sense of humour.”
Working with a budget of just $1 million, Wingard and Barrett cast in You’re Next a slew of independent film writer-directors, including Fessenden (Habit, Blackout), Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs), and Ti West (House of the Devil, X). Barrett himself portrayed one of the killers alongside L.C. Holt and Lane Hughes, co-writer of the early Wingard film Pop Skull. When I spoke with You’re Next producer Keith Calder for Screaming and Conjuring, he recalled the advantages of hiring filmmakers familiar with the indie world. “A lot of the perks that come along with being in a movie, even on lower-scale stuff, weren’t there,” said Calder, who produced the film with Barrett and Jessica Wu. “Because these were independent low-budget filmmakers, they understood that it wasn’t because they weren’t being treated well. It was, okay, we’re all in this together, and that money is going onto the screen.” This casting choice also adds a layer of deliciousness for in-the-know viewers to the moment when the movie where Swanberg’s deliciously boorish character interrogates West’s hipster documentarian. (“What is an underground film festival? Do they show the movies underground?”)
The project’s real casting coup was securing the services of Barbara Crampton to play the fragile matriarch of the Davison family. The actress acquired horror icon status with her performances in the ’80s movies Re-Animator, Chopping Mall, and From Beyond, but in recent years had stepped away from the film industry to concentrate on raising a family. “I think Barbara was Simon’s idea originally,” said Calder. “I don’t even know if we realized that she had sort of retired; we just knew she wasn’t working as much.” Fortuitously, Crampton was ready to make a return to the business. “I hadn’t talked to my agent in six years,” the actress told me. “He hadn’t dropped me from his roster, which a lot of agents do if you have an actor who hasn’t worked in a while. I got a call from him and I said, ‘Oh, Mike, you haven’t lost my number!’ He said, ‘No. In fact, I have an offer for you to be the matriarch-mom in this horror movie.’ I was dumbfounded. At that point in my life, I was thinking, Motherhood is really hard, and acting is really fun. It’s true! I thought, this film will go nowhere probably, but I’ll have a good time.”
Calder recalls Crampton being a joy on set, even if she did unwittingly cause the production one unexpected headache. “She was an absolute professional and she really understands the genre side of it, so we didn’t have to explain any of that stuff to her,” said the producer. “The thing we didn’t realize was how incredible she looks. It was like, you don’t necessarily look old enough to be the mother of these [adult] kids. So there was definitely a lot of like, how do we style you?”
You’re Next received its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2011. Before the end of the month, Lionsgate announced that the company had acquired the US rights to the film. Over the previous decade, the studio had enjoyed success with horror releases like Cabin Fever, Open Water, Hostel, The Descent, and the Saw franchise and seemed like the perfect home for the project. Producer Calder said to me that Lionsgate was “so passionate, and they were making a wide release offer. It was intended to be a pretty fast rush into release off the momentum of Toronto.”
The plan to give You’re Next a speedy theatrical rollout was derailed by Lionsgate’s acquisition of Summit Entertainment, which was announced in January 2012. Summit was best known as the home of the wildly popular Twilight series, whose fifth entry, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2, was set for release in November 2012. Aside from Twilight, the production and distribution company had a healthy slate of upcoming films, including Scott Derrickson’s Sinister and the zombie movie Warm Bodies. Calder recalled receiving the news that You’re Next might not be coming out for a while from Jason Constantine, the longtime Lionsgate executive who passed away earlier this year. “We got this sad call from Jason,” says Calder. “He’s like, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen. These two companies have merged together, they have two companies-worth of movies already in the pipeline.’ We kept thinking You’re Next was going to just disappear.”
In September 2012, Lionsgate announced that You’re Next would be getting a theatrical release, albeit not until August of the following year. The delay meant that You’re Next followed Blumhouse’s home invasion film The Purge, which was released two months prior to Wingard’s movie. “The only thing I was annoyed about was, I went to see [Fede Álvarez’s] Evil Dead and they played the You’re Next trailer after The Purge trailer,” said Wingard, “which just made us look like assholes.”
Lionsgate marketed the movie with posters that showed the film’s killers seemingly reflected in ads for other releases, including the Tyler Perry-directed Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. “That was Tim Palen [Lionsgate marketing executive] and his team, and it was brilliant,” said Calder. The company also attempted to entice cinemagoers with a trailer soundtracked by Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” “Honestly, I think that trailer cost almost as much as the film,” said Wingard.
You’re Next came out on August 23, 2013. The same week saw the release of the big-budget fantasy film The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and director Edgar Wright’s science fiction comedy The World’s End, the concluding entry in his Cornetto trilogy. The website Box Office Mojo had predicted that You’re Next could be the weekend’s number one movie. In the end, Wingard’s film finished in sixth place, grossing $7 million over its first three days on release. You’re Next would go on to earn a robust $18 million at the domestic box office, but media outlets routinely wrote up the long-delayed movie as a commercial disappointment. “I regard You’re Next as a huge success,” said Keith Calder, who would swiftly recombine with Wingard and Barrett for 2014’s Daniel Stevens-starring action-horror film The Guest. “It was an under-$1 million movie that sat on the shelf for two years, it’s grossing 18 times its budget. What else do you want from a movie?”
Personally, I want nothing else from You’re Next. I adored the movie when the film came out and fell in love with it all over again while rewatching Wingard and Barrett’s tale as research for Screaming and Conjuring. Ahead of writing this article, I decided to check out just the opening mayhem to remind myself of the movie’s vibe and wound up watching the whole thing right up to the belated and unfortunate arrival of the movie’s lone cop (played, incidentally, by yet another of the movie’s onscreen filmmakers, The Rambler director Calvin Lee Reader). Other devotees of You’re Next will be unsurprised by my inability to turn it off. To horror fans who have yet to see the film, I recommend you make it your next watch this Halloween season.
Screaming and Conjuring is now available to purchase from your favourite book retailer and direct from 1984 Publishing.
