[yasr_overall_rating]
After a young girl gets involved in a sexual confrontation, she is followed by an unknown force.
Every couple of years, a low-budget movie comes out of nowhere and redefines the horror genre. In 1968, George A. Romero started a zombie craze with his mega low-budget “Night of the Living Dead.” In 1978, John Carpenter pretty much invented the slasher genre with “Halloween” and in the years since, there have been multiple entries such as “The Evil Dead,” “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,” “The Blair Witch Project” and most recently, the “Paranormal Activity” series. Now while they don’t actually redefine the horror genre per se, these clever filmmakers are able to tell the same old story but with an innovative twist that leaves you stunned that you didn’t anticipate the intended outcome and when those movies appear, you can bet that shortly after, the horror market will be inundated with a slew of copycats. “It Follows” tells the story of a young girl, Jay (Maika Monroe) who after a sexual encounter with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary), wakes up to find herself strapped to a wheelchair. Hugh informs her that he won’t hurt her but in order for her to believe his incredible story, he will need to prove it to her.
From a distance, they see a naked woman slowly approaching and he informs her that the person could resemble someone she knows or it could take on the appearance of a complete stranger, regardless of the human look, this being will follow her until it kills her. It cannot be stopped, it cannot be reckoned with, it will simply follow you until you either pass it on to another person or it kills you, whichever comes first. In order for her to pass it on, she would have to have sex with someone. Hugh then takes her home and leaves her on the ground outside her house where her friends are waiting and drives off. When she tries to tell them what happened, they think that she might have been drugged but as strange and sinister events begin to occur, they slowly come to the realization that there is indeed something bizarre developing and after one night of passion with one of her friends, when he is found dead the next day, Jay must try to devise a strategy to bring ‘It’ out into the open with the intention of destroying it once and for all.
This kind of movie would have worked wonders for young, promiscuous, sex-driven teens back in the 80s because the underlying message here is, quite simply, don’t have sex. If you do, you run the risk of dying and that is the universal theme in all horror films. When we see a young couple making out, we know that soon after, either Jason or Freddy or Michael is going to appear and kill them. Furthermore, AIDS also comes to mind as well as any other number of STDs in the world today and if you refrain from having sex, your chances of living are much higher. But in the end, this is a horror film and for what it is, director David Robert Mitchell has created a plausible and convincing story similar to Wes Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” where our protagonist is the only one capable of seeing the bad guy, until it’s too late. It’s a hellish world where at times, you think you’re going crazy but when ‘It’ appears, you realize that its single-minded pursuit of you is not a hallucination or an urban legend but a nightmarish reality that you cannot wake up from.
Director David Robert Mitchell thankfully avoids the clichés of most other horror movies when it comes to scares, instead of loud banging noises or a cat jumping through the window at the last minute, Mr. Mitchell relies on abrupt imagery that genuinely frightens and raises the hairs on the back of your neck. In one scene, while holed up inside her bedroom with some friends, Jay hears a knock at the door and is immediately hesitant to open it but when they hear the voice of one of their friends on the other side, the apprehension eases a little and the door is slowly opened. We feel relieved that it really is her friend but in the bedroom across the hall, from out of the darkness comes a huge, hulking figure that was so unexpected most of the theater screamed out in fright. I’m not one to be easily scared, I’ve been watching horror films since I was 12 years old so I can pretty much guess when something is going to happen and 99% of the time, my guesstimates are right on the mark but here, there were a couple of genuinely frightening scenes that caught me off guard.
In those moments, I smiled to myself in the darkness of the theater and congratulated Mr. Mitchell on doing a damn good job. The movie was obviously very heavily influenced by John Carpenter’s “Halloween” in visual aesthetics but also in its musical score. The music brought me back to the late 70s and early 80s when synthesized soundtracks dominated most horror films, thanks in part to Mr. Carpenter’s prominence but also because it was cheaper than using a full orchestra, something most low-budget horror films could never afford. One other aspect of the movie I really liked, was that it is never explained how it all started, there was no backstory, no prologue, we are simply told that this is how it is and deal with it. We don’t need a backstory, the fact that it is all unexplained keeps the movie mysterious and cryptic and that just adds more to the film’s paranoid and frenzied narrative. “It Follows” is relentless in its pursuit to scare you and it achieves its goal, many times over. Highly Recommended.
In select theaters including the Angelika in Dallas and Plano March 20th
