Quik Flix Hit

It Follows (2014)

Rated R

Radius-TWC

With Oculus (2013), The Babadook (2014) and now It Follows, I’m beginning to believe again in my beloved and disappointing mistress, the horror genre, which for years has left me with heartache and heartburn. These recent gems bring hope that there are writers, directors, producers mining this genre who aren’t simply beholden to teen-demographic pandering, PG-13 half-assery and unnecessary remakes.

How’s this premise strike you? Jay (Maika Monroe), a post-high school teen whiling away waning autumn days with her sister and friends, goes out on a date with a cute guy she’s had her eye on. After a sexual encounter in the backseat of his car, cute guy informs her that during sex he “passed” something on to her. If that isn’t a horrifying setup right there, then what he’s passed on certainly is: a creature that can look like anyone, even those she loves, will begin to pursue her at a leisurely, but determined pace. “It’s very slow, but not dumb,” Jay is warned. It will unceasingly stalk her by slowly walking toward her—day or night, in empty places or crowded rooms. Only Jay (and those who have/had the curse) can see it, but it’s real. The brief and brutal opening scenes involving a previous female victim of this curse informs us of what this thing might do if it gets ahold of Jay. Cute guy tells her that if the creature kills her, it returns its attention to the last person to pass it on, and so on. It’s in his and Jay’s best interests, he says, for her to quickly sleep with someone else to move the curse on down the line.

With that setup, taking the teen-sex-equals-death horror trope to new extremes, It Follows builds up more tension than I would have imagined. It’s easy to outrun the thing, unless you’re unfortunate enough to allow yourself to get trapped in a corner, but its relentlessness is what terrifies. Jay can’t ever let her guard down to sleep, to attend classes at the community college. Even being surrounded by loving friends who can’t see the creature offers little comfort. It’s always out there, in some form—familiar or hideous, naked or clothed—walking toward her.

Somehow, director David Robert Mitchell’s film is able to evoke fear simultaneously in wide-open, populated areas and closed-off, isolated spaces. Think about that for a moment. When was the last time a horror film got you coming and going like that? At a park, in school hallways, at the beach, someone among the throngs of people is walking toward you—only you—with the intention of doing things to your body and mind you can’t dream up in nightmares. Hiding away in a sealed-up room or boathouse doesn’t leave you with an exit plan when something comes wrapping at the door or crashing through a window. So effective is the director’s use of wide shots (who or what is that moving in the distance behind Jay?), that any time he moves in for close-ups and tight shots, I tensed up wondering what’s occurring just out of frame. Poor Jay. She wasn’t a virgin to begin with, but was sex worth this? And as things become increasingly hopeless will she turn to sex again as a means to sidestep this curse? Certainly a pair of lustful friends are more than willing to help out. But Jay understands that sleeping with someone could condemn him to death.

Adding to this tense and intense film is the director’s sure hand at fashioning a dreamlike atmosphere. Sure, there’s the intrusive sync score that’s an intentional homage to ’80s soundtracks from horror maestro John Carpenter. Sure, Mitchell tries to affect a timeless quality by giving the film a retro look: tube televisions, phones with cords, cars your father drove. But above all, I think the director’s efforts are in service of tapping a visceral nightscape of inescapable terror that ultimately wears you down. This film: not only does it follow, it lingers.

I like how the kids give simple, natural performances; the lack of snarky, meta-dialogue that passes for cleverness these days is actually refreshing. When the finale at an abandoned public pool brings us to the head-on confrontation we’ve been awaiting and dreading, it’s a bit of a letdown only because everything else has been so effective. Turns out, what the creature might do is a more unnerving prospect than what it actually does.

I don’t need a sequel to this, which I’m sure is coming, but I would like to see more genre films strike out for original territory and tone, even at the risk of alienating the demographic that doesn’t seem to have a problem throwing money at mindless, gory, easily forgotten horror films.

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive