‘It Follows’ forgets to shake things up
It Follows is a film I am afraid will be buried under its own hype. That’s not to say it’s not a solid, occasionally tense, well-constructed film, which it is. But I fear it will be drowned in the unending waves of praise critics have been bestowing upon it.
A very methodically paced and, at times, downright creepy horror film in its small, independent-minded way, “It Follows” certainly has no problem setting itself apart from the normal fare of cheaply made, small-budget horror films that clog the arteries of the Redbox kiosks. And it certainly has more flair than the traditional crowd-pleasing, cheap-scare machines that are made by Hollywood today.
But original it is not, as it owes much to the '70s and '80s horror films that were born from the mad minds of John Carpenter, Brian DePalma and Wes Craven, and it reaches into the same bag of tricks they used to help establish the genre in its modern form.
Jay (played by Maika Monroe), is a seemingly pleasant-but-rudderless suburban teen living on the outskirts of Detroit. She decides to have sex with her boyfriend, but afterward is immediately informed by him that he passed some sort of entity to her that causes hallucinations in its host and can result in death if she is caught by it. The only way to rid herself of it is to sleep with someone else. That’s really the extent of it.
You can dig online to find a thousand different theories as to what the “It” in “It Follows” represents - STDs, an angry ghost of a dead girl, sexual assault, guilt, etc. The director, David Robert Mitchell, has been deliberately cagey about explaining the purpose - and rightfully so, as that keeps the discussion going.
The actors who played her friends and family were all drowsily amiable, but left no real lasting impression as they were not given much of an arc. They are merely layabouts who are given little dialogue and even less to do but help Jay flee from her imagined demons. Honestly, they were like the Scooby-Doo gang who skipped their antidepressants. As far as the ghostly figure that stalks our heroine, Mitchell does not give it any rules, so the teen’s attempts to combat it don’t hold much weight.
What it does do right is in its sedated pacing, its Detroit setting with an air of dread and decay, and its retro score. The latter seems like a lost composition from Carpenter and is loud and jarring without ever really seeming intrusive.
But I fear that the more “It Follows” is discussed - and hyped - the larger the expectations going into the film. And I say this as someone who generally respected what the filmmakers were trying to accomplish, but it’s not the horror reinvention it’s been touted as. It is more a sweet little homage, and, even then, there was another film that did it just a little bit better last year - the criminally underseen “The Guest.”
That film took all the same elements and basically shook itself like a snow-globe as we watched until all the flakes inevitably swirled and fell. “It Follows” does the same, but forgot to shake things up.
