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#475 - It Follows
David Robert Mitchell, 2014
After a seemingly ordinary sexual encounter, a young woman becomes the latest target of a malevolent spirit.
It's tough trying to provide a unique experience in horror today. This is an era where the found-footage gimmick is frequently used as a shortcut for creating a frightening atmosphere while also allowing for easy thrills thanks to the in-universe vulnerability of the camera operator as well as their on-screen companions. This has led to filmmakers trying their best to do throwbacks to previous generations of horror that recapture the same sense of dread using more deliberately immersive techniques. Right from the opening scene's sleepy suburban street strewn with autumn leaves and synthesised keyboard blaring into a viewer's ears, one can easily identify horror veteran John Carpenter as a major influence of the sensibilities of It Follows. It (the film) starts off with the tried-and-true trope of having a random victim fall prey to the monster off-screen so as to let us know just what lies in wait for our cast of main characters. The main character is Jay, a woman whose casual relationship with a man eventually results in the two of them having sex one night. He then chloroforms her and ties her to a wheelchair in order to explain the film's premise - that he has inflicted a sexually transmitted curse upon her where a mysterious creature (the "it" of the title) will relentlessly pursue the person who most recently joined the chain in order to murder them, then murder the person who originally had sex with them, and so on and so forth. As Jay starts to notice "it" appearing in the forms of haggard-looking individuals stumbling slowly but surely in her direction, her paranoia grows and she soon becomes desperate to stop "it" by any means necessary...
Even for such a clever take on the "sex equals death" horror trope, there are holes in the central premise that you could drive a truck through. The most prominent one ends up being how, despite the earlier claim that "it" can take on the appearance of an intended victim's loved ones in order to trap said victim, "it" almost always appears in the form of a mute, shambling, dead-eyed, gaunt-faced stranger that would probably prompt even non-cursed people to run away. Slow-moving monsters are nothing new to the genre (the many mundane-looking incarnations of "it" can easily remind a viewer of zombies), but here the execution is botched somewhat judging by the number of times that the protagonist is able to evade a grisly demise at the hands of "it" even in the least logical of circumstances. Then there's some of the characters' more ridiculous plot-driving decisions, including trying to form a plan to kill "it"...yeah, even for a film that's supposedly earning a cult reputation it still doesn't lack for blatant shortcomings. Even after taking these specific flaws into account, the core idea is still strong enough to justify a film that runs on dread right from the moment that Jay gets chloroformed. Though "it" may have some very impractical methods of attacking its victims, the paranoia involved with scanning a crowd or the horizon for any sign of "it" is solid enough to make up for it. The film then manages to maintain a perpetually tense atmosphere where even scenes dedicated primarily to character development might still result in an apperance by "it". There's also the weight of the moral dilemma weighing down on Jay as she has to decide whether or not she can go through with passing on the curse to anyone else, even if her only two male friends are (perhaps unsurprisingly) willing to make that sacrifice.
Given the low budget on display here, It Follows seems more naturally dependent on doing more with less. The actors are little more than serviceable while the handful of central characters get relatively little in the way of development between scenes where they are being menaced by "it". I've already noted the Carpenter influence, but that only goes some way towards describing the rather decent visual aesthetic on display here. I have to give the film some credit for camerawork that occasionally seems like it's setting up a jump-scare, but does so only to emphasise the tension involved with long-shots that implore audiences to be on the lookout for any sign of "it" (and that's without mentioning how well the camerawork is done in the wheelchair scene). The score is an unapologetic homage to the tinny keyboard squeals from Halloween, which do suit the film and its ambiguously anachronistic setting rather well. Though It Follows does a reasonably good job at generating suspense on the basis of its simple yet inventive premise, it still opens itself up to the same criticisms that affected many of the films from which it draws inspiration. The messy nature of its monster and the less-than-positive effect that it has on the narrative are significant flaws that will probably lessen my view of the film as time goes on, but as far as a single viewing goes it's a sufficiently tense little film.
David Robert Mitchell, 2014
After a seemingly ordinary sexual encounter, a young woman becomes the latest target of a malevolent spirit.
It's tough trying to provide a unique experience in horror today. This is an era where the found-footage gimmick is frequently used as a shortcut for creating a frightening atmosphere while also allowing for easy thrills thanks to the in-universe vulnerability of the camera operator as well as their on-screen companions. This has led to filmmakers trying their best to do throwbacks to previous generations of horror that recapture the same sense of dread using more deliberately immersive techniques. Right from the opening scene's sleepy suburban street strewn with autumn leaves and synthesised keyboard blaring into a viewer's ears, one can easily identify horror veteran John Carpenter as a major influence of the sensibilities of It Follows. It (the film) starts off with the tried-and-true trope of having a random victim fall prey to the monster off-screen so as to let us know just what lies in wait for our cast of main characters. The main character is Jay, a woman whose casual relationship with a man eventually results in the two of them having sex one night. He then chloroforms her and ties her to a wheelchair in order to explain the film's premise - that he has inflicted a sexually transmitted curse upon her where a mysterious creature (the "it" of the title) will relentlessly pursue the person who most recently joined the chain in order to murder them, then murder the person who originally had sex with them, and so on and so forth. As Jay starts to notice "it" appearing in the forms of haggard-looking individuals stumbling slowly but surely in her direction, her paranoia grows and she soon becomes desperate to stop "it" by any means necessary...
Even for such a clever take on the "sex equals death" horror trope, there are holes in the central premise that you could drive a truck through. The most prominent one ends up being how, despite the earlier claim that "it" can take on the appearance of an intended victim's loved ones in order to trap said victim, "it" almost always appears in the form of a mute, shambling, dead-eyed, gaunt-faced stranger that would probably prompt even non-cursed people to run away. Slow-moving monsters are nothing new to the genre (the many mundane-looking incarnations of "it" can easily remind a viewer of zombies), but here the execution is botched somewhat judging by the number of times that the protagonist is able to evade a grisly demise at the hands of "it" even in the least logical of circumstances. Then there's some of the characters' more ridiculous plot-driving decisions, including trying to form a plan to kill "it"...yeah, even for a film that's supposedly earning a cult reputation it still doesn't lack for blatant shortcomings. Even after taking these specific flaws into account, the core idea is still strong enough to justify a film that runs on dread right from the moment that Jay gets chloroformed. Though "it" may have some very impractical methods of attacking its victims, the paranoia involved with scanning a crowd or the horizon for any sign of "it" is solid enough to make up for it. The film then manages to maintain a perpetually tense atmosphere where even scenes dedicated primarily to character development might still result in an apperance by "it". There's also the weight of the moral dilemma weighing down on Jay as she has to decide whether or not she can go through with passing on the curse to anyone else, even if her only two male friends are (perhaps unsurprisingly) willing to make that sacrifice.
Given the low budget on display here, It Follows seems more naturally dependent on doing more with less. The actors are little more than serviceable while the handful of central characters get relatively little in the way of development between scenes where they are being menaced by "it". I've already noted the Carpenter influence, but that only goes some way towards describing the rather decent visual aesthetic on display here. I have to give the film some credit for camerawork that occasionally seems like it's setting up a jump-scare, but does so only to emphasise the tension involved with long-shots that implore audiences to be on the lookout for any sign of "it" (and that's without mentioning how well the camerawork is done in the wheelchair scene). The score is an unapologetic homage to the tinny keyboard squeals from Halloween, which do suit the film and its ambiguously anachronistic setting rather well. Though It Follows does a reasonably good job at generating suspense on the basis of its simple yet inventive premise, it still opens itself up to the same criticisms that affected many of the films from which it draws inspiration. The messy nature of its monster and the less-than-positive effect that it has on the narrative are significant flaws that will probably lessen my view of the film as time goes on, but as far as a single viewing goes it's a sufficiently tense little film.