10 Underrated Recent Movies That Deserve A Second Chance

5. You're Next

Jason Bourne
Hanway Films

Before he wowed everyone with The Guest (and impressed a select few with Blair Witch), Adam Wingard made You're Next, one of the standout horror films of recent years that's been resoundingly overlooked by splatter hounds and haemophobes alike.

To be fair, that it's dismissed as generic is almost part of the movie's pitch. Excellent ironic use of Perfect Day in the trailer aside, the film looked to be a pretty standard genre-director-for-hire home-invasion thriller, with a bit of a mystery serving as backbone for a bunch of creative deaths. And while you get the basic construction elements of that, Wingard does it with a big, knowing smirk. It's like a glossy, competent B-movie, with an awareness of the innate ridiculous and a lot of fun had with subverting traditional conventions.

The movie's not overt enough to become a genre deconstruction, neither is it audacious enough to be a pastiche, instead it's a heightened straight-up entry, which makes it not as instinctively grabbing for regular audiences, but conversely it's a perfect Netflix watch. Just wait for them to get the bloody rights and give it a look with that eye in mind.

Contributor
Contributor

Film Editor (2014-2016). Loves The Usual Suspects. Hates Transformers 2. Everything else lies somewhere in the middle. Once met the Chuckle Brothers.