It Follows riffs on a basic rule of classic horror movies: if you have sex, you die. In this case, the target is Jay (Maika Monroe), a nineteen-year-old living in a Michigan suburb in some indeterminate era. She has sex with her boyfriend Jeff (Jake Weary) before the night takes a turn to the weird. Jeff tells her that he has passed something on to her. From now on, she will be followed. It can take any form, but it can only walk. It is slow, but it is not dumb, she is told. If it catches her, it will most certainly kill her. She can pass it on to somebody else through sexual intercourse. But until then, it will relentlessly come after her.
In this way, the film distills the horror threat to a very specific concept. It has no specific form. It does not say anything. But it follows. And it is frighteningly strong, and it bears some weird sexual dimension to it. It comes for you and it kills you. And through the filter of this concept, It Follows dissects the anxieties of growing up, and of sexual awakening. It turns the quiet terror of growing up into the stuff of nightmares. It’s coming. It can’t be stopped. It Follows.
The film keeps things simple. It establishes the rules of the game and just plays it. It’s a very easy game to play. Again, the threat can take the form of anyone. And so anyone in frame walking silently could be the thing that’s following the main character. There are scenes that make potent use of this fact, with long, panning shots taking in the whole environment, building an atmosphere of unease as the camera passes by someone who could be very well be the threat.
The film really distinguishes itself through its filmmaking. Horror films all tend to look alike nowadays, and they all pull from the same bag of tricks. It’s all about following the rhythm, of creating a noticeable silence before unleashing a bit of loudness that’s meant to be scary. This film is much more shrewd with its rhythms. Its camera isn’t trying to hide anything. It isn’t trying to create shadowy spots from which the creature might emerge. It isn’t trying to use the camera to startle people. It instead uses it to build a cumulative sense of dread. It employs plenty of wide, open frames, allowing for the very simple but unsettling effect of the threat looming larger as it walks towards the camera. This threat doesn’t need to be hiding in the shadows, after. It is trying to startle the characters. It trying to kill them.
The film falters a bit in the end as it tries to find a solution to the problem. The climax is visually interesting but conceptually vague. It doesn’t seem like a payoff worthy of the setup, at the very least. But this all plays secondary to the metaphor built at the core of the film, which really plays off the anxieties of growing up, of venturing outside the world with which you’re familiar. At the edges of this film lies a story of kids that grew up in the artificial cocoon of suburbia, and are now being hounded by the reality of growing older. An excellent cast of young actors helps bring the subtext to life. Maika Monroe is one of the most promising young actresses out there right now, and she brings real vitality to her character’s growing sense of desperation.
It Follows is part of a movement of new horror films that appear to be taking inspiration from the genre’s past. The film’s score is noticeably John Carpenter-like in construction, and its lack of specificity about when the film is taking place suggests the timelessness of those genre classics. And it’s heartening. Horror has largely become the default genre for lazy filmmakers trying to make a quick buck. They just do the same thing over and over again without much thought put into what the film could actually say. It Follows says so much, and it’s actually pretty scary to boot.
My Rating:
