It Follows
Of all the genres of film, horror perhaps has the least respect, and for reasons perfectly understandable. What started out as a method of exploring fears and crises of human nature has turned into a cheap gore- delivery mechanism. In fact, it seems as though most recent horror movies are either so bad
as to be offensive ( Ouija) or so good as to be denied
wide release ( A Girl Walks
Home Alone at Night). It’s refreshing, then, to see a mainstream horror film that has a degree of intelligence and craftsmanship behind it getting the attention and support of a major distributor, in this case the Weinstein Co.
There’s a problem going on in this cozy suburb: Jay ( Maika Monroe), a spunky high school girl on the cusp of adulthood, is being followed around by a malicious entity that will kill her if it catches up to her. This entity can take the form of anyone — a parent, a friend, whatever will frighten her the most. Jay’s friends can’t see it, which makes her difficult to believe ( even her sister has doubts), but they support her nonetheless.
This thing isn’t following Jay around for no reason. It was passed to her by a man named Hugh ( Jake Weary), who was using Jay for sex, but not for the obvious reasons. He wanted to have sex with her because that’s how you get it to stop following you. “Sleep with someone as soon as you can,” he says, “and tell them to do the same.”
In the wrong hands, this premise could easily come across as comedic or downright silly. But writer/ director David Robert Mitchell makes expert use of the filmic language and, perhaps even more importantly, restraint to craft a genuinely creepy, disturbing and ( a rarity) scary horror film.
It Follows speaks in the language of familiarity and stillness. There’s nothing brash or overdone about this film — no rapid cuts, no shaky camera. Instead, Mitchell opts for long takes and still shots. He forces us to watch, to stay in the moment when we’d rather not. Or, he doesn’t let us see quite what we want, focusing on the reactions of characters to events rather than the events themselves.
This comes from an inherent uneasiness with long takes. In recent film history, cuts between camera angles have become more and more frequent. This can create a disconnection between the audience and the action, reminding them that it’s only a movie.
The camera in It Follows is very deliberate. Mitchell is clearly in control of what he wants his audience to perceive, which, for the most part, is a deliberately generic depiction of Middle American life — until it’s not.
The “generic” is what contributes to the familiarity, which contains a broad portrayal of middle- class childhood anywhere. The houses could belong to anyone, and the streets exude an air of apparent comfort. In this instance, however, the particular house and the particular street, which once was a sanctuary of childhood memories, now constitute a foreboding presence, host to unspeakable dangers that during the innocence of youth one would have never considered. The cinematography, while not flashy, contributes visually to the tone of the story being told.
The film is extremely well- crafted, with strong performances by an ensemble cast and an evocative ’ 80s- style synth score by Disasterpeace. In addition, the sound design underscores the unsettling atmosphere — for example, the ominous way the normal sound of waves lapping against a shore functions as an unnerving counterpoint to an otherwise placid soundscape.
However, the film isn’t without its faults. Some of the characters aren’t well- defined, acting as little more than devices to move the plot forward or to deliver quotations from literary works that underline the themes. Given how effective all the other pieces work when put together, it’s unfortunate that the writing can sometimes drag it down.
Despite the sketchiness of some of these characters, the emotional growth of the central group as a unit feels genuine. These characters are in a constant state of discovery and revelation, constantly commenting on their new understandings of the way the world works — why, for instance, their parents never let them out of the suburbs and into the city, and reminiscing on the simplicity of their youth, which now seems gone forever. Their world has been irrevocably changed.
It’s tempting to think about the film as a sort of cautionary lecture on the hazards of teenage promiscuity. After all, the idea here is that sex, quite literally, kills. But there’s something deeper going on. The sex is simply representational of the final step out of childhood into the adult world. It Follows is not about the dangers of sleeping around; it’s about something much scarier: growing up.