I'm almost done with my stint at the Toronto Film Festival, so it seems oddly appropriate that a film I saw at the end of last year's fest is making headlines today. You're Next, the wry indie horror film that premiered here last year and was snapped up by Lionsgate Entertainment, has finally set a release date, with the studio now planning to release it August 23, 2013. Yes, that will be almost two years after its festival premiere, which means all the people like me who loved it at the time will have to see it again to refresh our memories and preach its glory. But late August can often be a great time for horror movies to step up and take over the box office-- just look at how The Possession has dominated these last few weeks.
And though You're Next is far from your typical studio horror movie output, an independent production made with some of the biggest voices in small-scale indie filmmaking right now, it has the horror goods to make it work. Collider broke the news of the release date with no further information from the studio, and they promise to be covering it like it's the last film on Earth. I can't promise the same over here, but you can at least check out my review from Toronto last year, where I called it "an exceedingly well-made but also economical indie that uses the "house under siege" side of the horror genre for both old-fashioned scares and some twisted humor."
And if you want to see more from the film's director Adam Wingard between now and then, he's a contributor to the horror anthology The ABC's of Death, which is playing at the Toronto Film Festival this year as part of the Midnight Madness program, as well as another horror anthology called V/H/S, which is currently playing On Demand and opens in theaters on October 5. I haven't seen either of those films, because I'm generally a huge weenie when it comes to horror and don't want to be scared. And yet I loved You're Next-- that's how great it is. I promise it's worth the wait.
