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How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 11 January 2015
This article is a review of IT FOLLOWS.Seen at the Busan International Film Festival 2014. (For more information, click here.)
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”Just know that I love you,” Annie (Bailey Spry)
What an opening. A young woman runs from her home into the dawn. A place of theoretical sanctuary, turns out not to be so. Even neighbours unloading a car do not assuage her palpable distress. Hysterical wailing is wisely sidestepped (though when you come to find out what is after her it would be understandable), and instead wrought tension is perfectly calibrated to make you sick to your gut – in an enjoyable way, if you enjoy that sort of thing. Driving to a beach, the young woman, Annie, rings her father to try and briefly put her house in order. In the morning her horrifically broken body is discovered. Limbs twisted and severed would have required immense power.
What an opening. A young woman runs from her home into the dawn. A place of theoretical sanctuary, turns out not to be so. Even neighbours unloading a car do not assuage her palpable distress. Hysterical wailing is wisely sidestepped (though when you come to find out what is after her it would be understandable), and instead wrought tension is perfectly calibrated to make you sick to your gut – in an enjoyable way, if you enjoy that sort of thing. Driving to a beach, the young woman, Annie, rings her father to try and briefly put her house in order. In the morning her horrifically broken body is discovered. Limbs twisted and severed would have required immense power.
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Writer-director David Robert Mitchell (THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER) has made a sophomore feature of real confidence, shaming 95 per cent of horror movies in the process. Too much dross must be waded through to find the gems. Laziness and ineptitude are giving the genre a bad name. Then along comes an OCULUS or an IT FOLLOWS to give hope.
Safe, boring suburbia is ripe for examining unspoken societal undercurrents. Jay (Maika Monroe – THE GUEST), a 19-year old, reads on her old-school clamshell mobile phone, while Vangelis-style futuristic electronic music furthers the tone of unease. At the cinema, about to watch CHARADE (good choice), Jay’s date, Hugh (Jake Weary), sees a girl in a yellow dress that his companion doesn’t. Agitated, he still continues with the evening. Post-coitus, in a desolate car park, Hugh knocks her out with chloroform. Slasher exploitation territory is not on the filmmaking agenda, even as Jay awakens strapped to a wheelchair in an abandoned building.
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“This thing is going to follow you. Someone gave it to me. I gave it to you in the car,” Hugh to Jay
That is not what you want to hear after a romantic encounter. Camera attached to the wheelchair as Hugh manoeuvres it, and then we see what he is so terrified of. A woman walks towards them unrelentingly, reminding of the Terminator: Focused and malevolent. Whatever this supernatural being is, wherever it came from, it will stalk the last person having the unknown element passed along during sex. Once executing the victim, it will continue along the chain of physical partners. Not only viscerally blood chilling, IT FOLLOWS weaves in an S.T.D. allegory. To survive, she must pass it on.
Beyond skill at sustaining alarm, the film does what so many other horror movie protagonists fail to do: Recruit their friends to help them. Likeable leads and believable dialogue show how fright cinema should be done. Even in a gang, little respite is given. They swallow their incredulity of the story, especially as they cannot see the spectre. (Jay’s mother is felt not to be strong enough to handle the truth.) As the, ahem, Scooby Gang rally, we eventually see what the monster does to someone, which is the only bum note. Mystery and ambiguity should have been sustained; the initial body was sufficient to present the stakes. That aside, IT FOLLOWS is a cold sweat inducing masterclass.
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