It Follows

Synopsis: At the start of a night at the movies, suburban teenager Jay (Maika Monroe) must follow her date, 21 year old Hugh (Jake Weary), as he flees the cinema after seeing a woman in a yellow dress. Later, when things seem to have calmed down, Jay and Hugh wind up having sex in the back of his car, but things don’t end the way Jay had imagined and she quickly discovers that he’s passed on some kind of curse that means she will be relentlessly pursued by a murderous, shape-shifting force that only she can see and that can take on the appearance of any stranger, friend or family member. The only escape is to pass it on to someone else and the only way to do that is to have sex with them.

The residue of this genuinely creepy horror film has stayed with me long after the closing credits, not so much because of the scary stuff, but because it gives us a lot to think about, something which is not always the case in contemporary horror films. Often these films are long on splatter and cheap thrills and short on psychology and substance, especially when the central characters are a bunch of hormonal teenagers. And yes, this film does offer quite a few jolts to get the heart racing, but these are by no means its most compelling moments. Where this film really succeeds is when both the heart and mind are set racing by its disturbing premise and its unsettling atmosphere.  The idea that this ‘thing’ is constantly able to change its appearance and somehow knows where you are at all times and, with no apparent motive,  will just keep coming after you until it gets you is the kind of simple terror that inhabits nightmares. It’s only weakness seems to be the fact that it can’t run which affords its victims the chance to keep ahead of it if they can. But its walk is no aimless zombie shuffle, it’s a purposeful, focused stride that has just one destination in mind. Again, the stuff of nightmares.  

It Follows sits in the genre of ‘pass it on’ horror films the like of Nakata Hideo’s The Ring (1998) where the protagonist falls victim to the horrifying thing through some kind of innocent act, in this case the act of having sex with your boyfriend. It would be easy to take a conservative view and to see this as some kind of comment on the consequences of teenage sex or a metaphor for the loss of innocence that goes along with that, but to my mind there’s something deeper and more original going on here.

Like his 2010 film, The Myth Of The American Sleepover, Mitchell’s second feature is set in the urban decay of Detroit, full of visually striking images of row upon row of abandoned and boarded up houses left behind after the global financial crisis. The setting is subtly captured by Mike Gioulakis’ moody and measured cinematography that juxtaposes the desolate landscape against quite beautiful images of the natural world as seen through the eyes of Jay. The idea that within this landscape lurks this presence that is following her is frighteningly accentuated by the constant camera movement that shifts and circles around to remind us that what ‘follows’ could come from anywhere and might be any of the extras we see as the camera slowly, smoothly pans by. It’s a clever, low budget effect that uses the camera rather than the computer to build the tension. It’s this imagery of the suburban wasteland that keeps coming back to me, along with Jay’s world that is presented to us almost entirely devoid of adults.  It’s as though the avarice of American capitalism that fuelled the GFC has produced this void within which Jay and her friends exist seemingly without adult role models or supervision. Perhaps it’s this that is the real horror, the legacy of what the previous generation has left behind. Perhaps it’s this that is really following these kids.

Add to this the marvellous retro-influenced production design by Michael Perry and art direction by Joey Ostrander and an 80s-style soundtrack from Rich Vreeland in the guise of Disasterpeace (reminiscent of John Carpenter from the same era) and this is a film to be admired as much as it is to be enjoyed. Of course there are moments that one might quibble about; the occasional convenient coincidence to move the story along or the relatively simple resolution to Jay’s supernatural stalker, and in a lesser film these might be harder to forgive but the intelligence behind the camera and the strong performances in front both come together to make this a very satisfying, thoughtfully scary night out.

 

 

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