It Follows does it one better. As the best horror movie in years, David Robert Mitchell’s second feature assimilates death into the fabric of American youth culture, making its fatalism not only intimate, but unshakable—like that knowing feeling you’re being watched. Right now. Purportedly based on one of Mitchell’s own childhood nightmares, It Follows grasps onto that primal terror that something is coming for you, and that no matter what you do, it will have its way with your innocence, vitality, and even your life, leaving nothing in its wake but spoiled meat. It’s a metaphor that doesn’t need much explanation, because we all know it, and the beauty of this film is that it’s personified by an inexplicable and unstoppable Other that makes the lives of the film’s central teenage heroes not only truncated, but unbearably aware of a brutally imminent finality. After they have sex, Hugh immediately chloroforms Jay, and wakes her to a horrifying reality: he has passed It along. He doesn’t know what It is, or what It wants, but It is like the world’s worst chain letter, a supernatural creature whose gaze is transferred from one young person to the next via sexual encounter. Once It has passed to you, there is no hiding; It will find you and It will kill you, unless you pass the curse along to someone else. However, if that person should die, then the nameless hunter will renew its search for you. Oh, and It can look like anyone or anything while marching you towards oblivion. There is an obvious allegorical quality about STDs barely hiding beneath the surface of It Follows, yet this feels almost like a red herring. Mitchell’s film is far more interested in conjuring a dreamlike and universal distillation of youth’s death obsession, made immediate and omnipresent by the titular and unstoppable evil entity that’s always shuffling towards Jay and the audience, whether onscreen or off. Thus this long-building scare has the appeal of a campfire ghost story, right down to its unspoken 1980s setting. It Follows does not feel period, but rather purely and implicitly horrific, even before death comes calling. After a century, the dreary castles and stampeding gothic carriages have been supplanted in the horror zeitgeist with paneled station wagons and raspy electronic synthesizers. Indeed, Rich Vreeland’s weirdly melodic score lingers as a lullaby, but like other 1980s genre heroines, don’t be foolish enough to fall asleep. In this vein, the corded landlines and cheek-wide earphones attached to background characters’ walkmans add to a wordless cinematic menace still resonating from the Reagan Years. Still, at its core, It Follows grounds the terror in uncomfortably authentic and modern teenage life. I have not seen Maika Monroe before, but her performance as Jay bodes well for her career since she’s instantly sympathetic due to her unending, pitiable terror. While hardly the trite archetypical “good girl,” Jay is still a very good girl, or young woman, who is both coveted and envied by her friends for always making the right and attractive choice—which she is nonetheless punished mercilessly for when It appears with a creepy new visage, sometimes as an old nursing home escapee, and sometimes as a grotesquely ravaged naked body. There is an implicit knowledge between It and Jay that each of these pursuing countenances are those of victims who succumbed to death’s unavoidable persuasion. Yet, the greatest character remains Mitchell’s own adroit camera, which rarely posits for the cheap jump scare. The opening scene of It Follows alone is instantly able to ensnare viewers into its suburban myth when another girl, presumably one of Hugh’s previous conquests, is chased out of her home by an invisible nightmare. Whereas we can see the transmuted monstrosity after Jay has likewise been blighted, we do not see this young woman’s demon. But in a striking 360-degree shot by cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, we witness It dauntlessly chase her around her concerned father, in and out of her childhood home, across the driveway, and onto the parkway towards Hell. We also eventually see what becomes of those who surrender to the chase. Later, in another visually hopeless moment, Jay sits on a beach chatting with her friends about how far she must go while It approaches at a ginger pace from a distance to right behind her shoulder over several minutes in a forced camera angle. The terror isn’t from the suddenness of annihilation, but due to its ceaseless presence. further reading: It Follows’ Terrifying Horror Lineage The inescapable dread of It Follows is so pervasive, and so relentless, that long after the movie house lights go up, it continues to march forward in the mind, and this will be especially true for its target audience of young adults, who have found their generation’s Curse of the Demon. By introducing an artful nihilism to a well-worn genre, It Follows births a new ticking crocodile that is far more incomprehensible and malevolent than any in the past, because it preys on children who will never grow up.
title: “It Follows Review” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-17” author: “Wanda Schultz”
It Follows achieves something similar. There’s something unerringly simple at its heart, but it finds and commits to a surprisingly creepy tone very early on, and I can’t think of a point where it lets its focus grip. What’s interesting is that writer/director David Robert Mitchell is playing with conventions that have tripped so many in the horror genre up before. His film is led by a teen ensemble, there’s something coming for at least one of them, there’s the matter of teenage sex, there are red herrings, and there’s a young lead in Maika Monroe who in the early stages seems to be being put through the horror movie motions. Furthermore, the opening scene – a young woman in her underattire, pegging it down the street from some unseen foe – did not leave me with the early impression that It Follows had much special about it. As it turns out, it’s the weakest part of the movie. Mitchell’s trump card, though, proves not to be his idea, but his quite brilliant execution of it. His camera moves slowly. Oftentimes, it’s fixed, forcing us to stare at the film, looking for the tiniest hint of movement in the background. Those who watched The Strangers may recall a particularly chilly scene in the midst of that movie, that tends to get talked about more than the feature entire. It Follows maintains that kind of tone for the whole movie. Furthermore, Mitchell never cheats, either. He has many moments where you think something is going to happen, certainly, but at no stage in the movie does he go for the cheap jump, or the quick scare. He builds and builds and builds and builds, and when he decides he’s going to release some of that tension, it’s genuinely chilling, very creepy and just a little bit scary. In truth, I haven’t felt so unnerved watching a horror film of this ilk in a long time. For this isn’t taking the approach of The Babadook, last year’s best horror movie, that works on many levels. It Follows has things going on, but it’s a slightly more straightforward narrative beast. Which means that for the film to work, pretty much everything within it has to hold together. The details matter. Mitchell’s use of sound is exquisite. On the way out of the screening, the people in front of me described the film as “weird”. I don’t think it is, but by moving the camera so little, and deploying Rich Vreeland’s score so stunningly, it suddenly feels like all the other movies are weird. This is the way horror of this ilk can and should be done. Even the ending is really well done, and not in a cheap way. How often can you say that? Maika Monroe’s performance in particular is superb here, giving one of the most convincing screen performances of abject fright we’ve seen in a long time. But it’s more than that: she’s believable, she has a circle of friends and family who are both fleshed and convincingly support her, and when she’s faced with difficult decisions that in other hands may feel cheap, it all feels utterly logical. It Follows in out in UK cinemas on February 27th Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
