In a unique bit of inspiration, teens having sex leads directly to their deaths – but it’s not a girls only club. It is an equal opportunity stalker/slayer.
It Follows owes something to John Carpenter – especially Halloween – but establishes its own identity almost immediately. This is the creepiest, most disturbing and certainly scariest horror film of the 21st Century.
The film opens with a teen girl named Annie running from her house, driving to a beach and – in a shattering phone call – telling her father she loves him and is really sorry she was such a $#!+ to him. We then cut to a shot of her broken body.
Jay Height (Maika Monroe, The Bling Ring) has a boyfriend called Hugh (Jake Weary, Pretty Little Liars). The two have sex after a number dates (we see two, but there’s a hint that it might be the third or fourth) – then he chloroforms her.
When she wakes up, she’s tied to a chair in the middle of a long abandoned building – where Hugh informs her that, in having sex with her, he’s passed on a nasty curse. There’s a thing that will follow her wherever she goes and, if it catches her, it will kill her. If she hasn’t passed the curse on, it will kill him, too and go back up the line of everyone who has previously passed it on until it reaches the original person. And, just as a by the way, it will take whatever form it needs to take to get close to her…
He doesn’t untie her until she sees It – in the form of a naked woman – then takes her home. When she tries to explain what happened to her, her sister, Kelly (Lily Sepe) and their friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi) and Paul (Kier Gilchrist, United States of Tara), they don’t believe her.
Then, a few days later, she’s in class when she sees an old woman coming toward her across the quad. When It follows her home, she and her friends enlist the aid of Greg (Daniel Lovatto, Laggies). He might not believe her, but he is willing to help.
It Follows was written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (The Myth of the American Sleepover) and may show its Carpenter influences (lower middle-class suburbia, relentless pursuer, strong female characters, stinging electronica score), but it stakes its own ground by the use of It’s shapeshifting ability. It can be a battered woman, a seemingly frail old woman, a naked old man, even, briefly, the image of Jay’s father.
It’s also a major difference that It doesn’t stop after killing the most recent of the cursed, but then goes back along the chain. It can only be seen It’s current and past victims – though it is substantial and can affected by others (if they can find it), though it cannot be killed. It Follows could have been seen as an AIDS metaphor if not for these details. Now, It might be seen as either the ultimate, retroactive STD, or the ultimate stalker.
There are few things scarier than to discover at an inopportune moment that you’re being followed by a stranger.
Normally, when a horror movie establishes a single mood from the beginning, it doesn’t work, but Mitchell makes it work by using wide shots of locations and allowing action to happen within the shot rather than taking the shot to the action – at least for the most part.
Another thing that helps is that he maintains a much slower pace than the usual horror movie – allowing us to get into Jay’s head and build empathy. It’s not that there aren’t jump moments – there are three or four really good ones. The thing is, they don’t come at any predictable moments – Mitchell’s pacing pushing the scares into odd, disturbing beats.
Another plus is that Mitchell doesn’t push the film too far, time-wise. Minus closing credits, it’s a hair over 95 minutes long – though it feels shorter despite the slower pacing because we really get to know the characters.
It Follows has the goods. Go see it.
Final Grade: A