You Might Be The Killer had the potential to be a fun meta-slasher, but unfortunately, the 2018 horror-comedy revealed its twist way too early in its runtime. Released in 2018, You Might Be The Killer brought together Cabin in the Woods’ Fran Kranz and Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Alyson Hannigan for another fun bit of horror-trope-subverting comedy, and the movie's clever conceit meant it had the potential to effectively send up the slasher sub-genre while also providing some serious gore and scares.
The horror-comedy, based on a Twitter thread from a few years earlier, sees Kranz play the beleaguered Sam, a camp counselor whose abandoned summer camp is besieged by a mysterious masked murderer. Sam is understandably terrified, so he calls his best friend and horror aficionado Chuck (Hannigan), who tries to reassure him and help him unmask the killer, only to realize the title could be true.
It’s a great premise that could have made for a superb and ambitious deconstruction of slasher tropes in the vein of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, The Final Girls, or even the later, sillier Scream sequels. However, You Might Be The Killer committed a fatal mistake when the movie revealed the twist (that yes, the camp counselor who is painted out to be the 'good guy' is in fact the killer) very early in the movie’s runtime. The premise was a unique one that could have stood out among a crowded field of subversive slasher movie parodies, so it's a shame it was ruined by revealing this key element so early.
It’s always risky to try and prolonged an anticipated twist, so given the title of You Might Be the Killer, it’s understandable that the creators ended up showing their hand too early. However, the superficially similar if tonally darker The Cabin in the Woods managed to maintain its central mystery despite dropping hints throughout the movie, as revealing the twist would have sapped the film of its central tension. Without a sense of tension, slasher spoofs become straight-up comedic parodies like 2012’s Kill Me Now or 2015’s Dude Bro Party Massacre 3. There's nothing wrong with a good purely comic parody but it’s clear that You Might Be The Killer, with its high body count and tense moments, was intended to feature some straight horror in terms of tone.
The best way to delay the reveal would have been introducing a slew of other characters who could reasonably have been suspects in the many gory murders of You Might Be the Killer. It’s often forgotten, for example, that the original Friday the 13th didn’t reveal the identity of its killer until the closing scenes. This approach cast suspicion across the sparse cast until that point to keep the movie's proceedings creepy. This sort of ingenuity would have given You Might Be the Killer more plot to work with as well as being a more faithful recreation of the 80s slasher it was spoofing, many of which also utilized this Giallo-style whodunit framework.