10 Movies That Ingeniously Subverted Expectations
4. You're Next
Like Funny Games, Adam Wingard's You're Next seems like a pretty straight-forward home invasion movie on a superficial level, but Wingard and his writer Simon Barrett were ultimately far more interested in upending one specific trope of the slasher film: the final girl.
Rather than have petite protagonist Erin (Sharni Vinson) scarcely muster the courage to defeat her aggressors, the big twist is that Erin was raised in a survivalist compound and has a Special Set of Skills that her attackers weren't counting on.
The dynamic is suddenly flipped and the hunters become the hunted, with the rest of the movie defined by Erin brutally, creatively dispatching the home invaders.
Rather than string the story along by having the final girl make mistakes which put her in danger, Erin is extremely smart and resourceful from start to finish, offering up one of the finest horror heroines from the last decade in the process.