We return to Horror Madness and to the home invasion subgenre, as Adam Wingard’s clever You’re Next faces M. Night Shymalan’s clever The Visit. It’s clever versus clever! Both of these films are well-made and fun, and choosing between them will be hard.
See the introduction and full slate here http://oftenveryvile.ghost.io/introducing-horror-movie-madness/.
Both of these films are about family.
Home invasion films often are; they’re about our fears over what happens when our homes aren’t safe, and we’re afraid of that because we so desperately need our homes to be safe, to be the safest places. The fear explored by these two films is even deeper, and more frightening to even articulate: that the family itself is not a safe harbor, regardless of where it finds itself.
You’re Next is, at its core, about what happens when family relationships are corrupted by money. Under capitalism the family must be understood as not only a loving collection of related people caring for each other, but as a mechanism for the reproduction of labor, and for the hoarding of wealth. We see this family through the eyes of an outsider - she’s bewildered, and disgusted, by the odd rituals and unspoken grievances that make this upper crust family up. She is, crucially, the only one to survive the night. You’re Next shows what happens when a family is nothing but a vehicle for the transfer of wealth. The danger, here, is not outside - it comes from within.
The Visit is different. It ultimately reinforces the idea of the family as a ballast against danger. It is about a weak family, one that doesn’t know itself, being infiltrated by strangers and the danger that ensues. The weakness of the family should not be taken as evidence that families cannot be that ballast; instead, The Visit shows you the importance of family unity by showing you what happens when it’s not there. If only Katherine Hahn’s mother had forgiven her parents, then her children would know them, and they would not be in danger from imposters pretending to be them.
You’re Next has better, more interesting politics, and that does matter to me. It works as a kind of satire of home invasion films, in that Wingard realizes that these films are really about property and wealth-hoarding. He’s a filmmaker with a lot to say; we probably won’t get to The Guest with this project, but it’s a real contemporary classic and one of the best films made about the Iraq war.
The Visit has more conservative politics, though its conservatism of a small-c kind. This is typical for M. Night Shymalan, a very talented filmmaker with a very uneven filmography. While he is smart enough to see the dangers that families (and false families) can pose, he is ultimately sentimental about them - The Visit is a paean to the need for forgiveness.
But there’s more to the films than politics. The Visit is perhaps Shymalan’s most formally adventurous film. The found footage device, which was very trendy in horror at the time, is used intelligently and deliberately; there is always a good reason for the camera to be running, and the camera’s presence both serves and creates the story. You’re Next is pretty straightforward - it’s a very good, well made horror film that also owes a lot to mumblecore. The performances in each film are good, though I think they’re better in The Visit, which is extremely well cast.
The winner is The Visit, though only by a hair.