Horror can be a tough genre to crack, hence the prevalence of 'b-movies', films that attempt horror but come off as cheap and dull because somewhere along the way the people making it have forgotten to actually make it frightening in any way. Unfortunately, You're All Gonna Die is one of these kinds of films, a film that has flat and lifeless characters, a dull and predictable plot, no tension or visual flair, and terrible sound design throughout.
The film opens with a woman being chased down by tow truck in the middle of the desert, a chase that results in her gruesome death. Jumping forward in time, we learn that the man the police believe to be responsible has been arrested, and is sitting on death row. A group of young investigators who work for a group that finds evidence to help falsely imprisoned people, believes that he's another case of a forced confession, and that the real killer is still out there.
The five of them head out into the desert to try and find some kind of proof that the man didn't do it, and start checking through an old, abandoned camp site in the middle of nowhere. Of course, however, the real killer is there, waiting for them, and sets out to kill them all one by one.
The first real hurdle for You're All Gonna Die is the basic premise of the plot. It's never made clear what this group is hoping to find in the middle of the desert that would prove a man didn't commit several murders, and there's no explanation given for why the killer is there. Later on in the movie we see that the killer lives far away from the camp site, so it's not like they stumbled into his lair, and instead he just happened to be out there. Was he waiting for them intent on killing them, or did he just stumble across them and decide to make them his victims? It's not explained. Neither is him going from hunting down lone women to taking on a group of people. It's all a bit barebones.
It doesn't help that when all of the killing kicks off it's the middle of the day. Visual atmosphere is a big part of horror, and a film need to make you feel on edge. Having the audience checking every shadow and dark space, looking for the killer as he sneaks around is a good way of getting the viewer involved. Having a killer just walking straight towards his victims through a sparse desert environment in bright daylight produces no tension, and comes across as fairly dull and lacklustre, especially as it means when characters vanish suddenly, or fail to notice something it raises questions of how.
Visually, the film struggles with its gore too. There is almost no physical gore effects used in the film, other than the occasional bloodstain or splatter on an actors face or clothing. When the kills come it's done using CGI, and not very great CGI at that either. One character is gutted, and the blood that drips down the side of her body looks static and fake, and you can see that it doesn't completely cover everything and join up with the wound site in one moment too. Another character has their head bashed with a hammer, and we get a rather comical dent in their head that breaks any kind of meagre tension there was in the moment. Muzzle flashes on guns, and people being shot, are all added via CGI as well, and as such the violence has no reality or weight behind it.
Sound is another issue that You're All Gonna Die struggles with. The volume of the voices, music, and background effects varies from scene to scene. There are some parts of the movie where it's almost impossible to make out what characters are saying as their voices drop to little more than muffled background noise as the music swells to dominate the scene. It feels like there are a few moments in the film where someone mixed up their settings for the sound levels, and no one bothered to check through it. These moments are so noticeable and so jarring it makes you think that there has been no quality control for the film at all, or that no one cared enough to go back and fix things.
The acting is the only saving grace for the film, even if that also has harsh drops in quality from character to character. The main group of young people feel less like people and more like approximations of how an older person thinks a younger generation focused on justice and fairness would talk. Dialogue is stilted, and the delivery on a lot of the lines comes across like even the actors didn't want to say them. The older cast are by far the better ones, but unfortunately their screen time is quite limited. Lori Petty, best known for her roles in films like Tank Girl, Free Willy, and Point Break, is enough to save the film, even if her scenes are the best ones.
I've always been a fan of what some people wild describe as 'bad' movies, the kind of films that some people would look down on for being popcorn entertainment with no real substance. A lot of the time these low budget, shakyily made films still contain a lot of passion, and some moments of real quality to be found. Unfortunately, You're All Gonna Die isn't one of these films. It's dull, uninspired, and left me bored throughout. By all means, try it yourself, but it's not one that I can recommend.
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