“It’s slow, but it’s smart.”
Swift shot: I think the biggest complaints I hear about films is that nothing new is being created. Everything is a re-boot or a remake or a re-imagining. With It Follows, I am happy to say, Hollywood has a new monster! One that might just scare the living shit out of you too! With excellently deployed scoring by @Disasterpeace, It Follows is a superb horror that uses every trick taught in film school. It’s clear that Director David Robert Mitchell got an A in every class! And he could easily branch out to any genre. I will gladly watch anything he touches until he makes me see otherwise.
[Swift aside: I see David Robert Mitchell is a graduate of FSU, but I can’t hold that against him as a lifelong Canes fan . . . the guy knows his shit!]
Set in a small suburb on the outskirts of the almost Demilitarized Zone that is Detroit, It Follows focuses almost exclusively on the young post-high school adolescents on one street. The adults are almost Peanuts like, superfluous and uninteresting.
Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is literally drifting in a pool of complacency, she’s young, attractive, has a great group of friends and is just an average girl next door type. She’s just started seeing a guy that all her friends, and her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe) like. She’s even thinking about doing “it”with him.
After they consummate their relationship in the back of a car seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the charming guy Hugh (Jake Weary) shows her something horrible. It isn’t like anything she’s ever seen, and she isn’t sure she believes this crazy guy. Her tight bunch of friends supports her, her Emma Stone-lite pal, Yara (Olivia Luccardi) and bookish Paul (Keir Gilchrist) who clearly has a crush on her. Paul has liked Jay his whole life. They all want to believe Jay, but it’s pretty far-fetched stuff.
Here’s the gist of It, whatever “It” is, when you have sex with someone that has It, you become It’s next target. It’s like an STD scare movie from a high-school assembly meets The Ring. Thing is, if you have sex with someone THEY become the prime target, and It won’t come after you until It has vanquished the last person to have It. Shit, it sounds like some macabre form of fuck tag! Tag, you’re It! Think about who you are doing “It” with next time!
Anyway, It is incredibly slow, to the point where images of the original Mummy conjured up in my head while watching It stalk these poor teenagers. One thing everyone knows in a horror movie with teenagers, if you do it, you are fornication fodder. It is also damned clever, and I won’t reveal Its main power. Once I heard what that power was, I thought the film makers might over employ it, but the balance was perfect.
I think that’s what really impressed me with It Follows, the balance of everything. These kids are a terrific ensemble of sympathetic victims. Honestly, I don’t want to be too forward, but I felt like I was watching this generation’s new Brat Pack for the first time. Oddly enough, there isn’t a lot of exposition spent (nor wasted) on their pasts. But, the plodding pursuit by It allows us to see enough about them, just teasing us and forcing us to care.
My favorite part of this film is the sound work by @Disasterpeace; it was perfect! Some scenes were chilling just because the music worked so well. I heard a stand up comedienne one time say she wasn’t afraid of spiders, she was afraid of violin music, because every time they would show spiders on TV they’d play that high-pitched violin with a definitively skin crawling staccato. It Follows was like that, the cinematography was masterful, the bold angles and use of perspective was exceptional. I just think, God, I can’t wait to see what else these folks do, and especially Director David Robert Mitchell. It’s a good thing he’s talented, because with a name like that, he is a shoe in to be an assassin.
This was a film that could have been annoying had it not been handled with such cinematic aplomb. If you are a film lover, and you want to see some incredible work, with a new Hollywood monster that might just have you checking if every building you enter has multiple exits for the rest of your life, It Follows is the perfect creeper film for you. Just so you know, I watched this, alone, in pitch dark, on my iPad, and the immersion was palpable. I kept looking out of the corner of my eye into my kitchen. I’d love to hear how you think it worked in theaters too. And, I hope you enjoy It as much as I did.
