Oh you silly teenagers. Lazing around watching TV, whiling the hours away in your swimming pools and chilling out with your friends is fine. But surely you know by now that having sex is going to have life-changing repercussions that could end up with you in a twisted, mangled and decidedly dead heap on a beach? Surely you’ve seen “Scream”, “Halloween” and the like, films in which ironically it’s after you have sex that you really get fucked.
Well, if somehow you haven’t, happily for you David Robert Mitchell, director of the outstanding new horror “It Follows” has, and has built expertly on the twisted logic and suburban mundanity of those classic precursors to create something truly special. And hopefully you misbehaving, lascivious teenagers will finally learn something about the urgent need to keep it in your pants.
“It Follows” starts as it means to go on – with an atmosphere dripping with fear and threat, as a terrified teenage girl dashes into her house at night, grabs her stuff, and gets the hell out of there, fleeing to a deserted beach seemingly miles away from human habitation. It’s not clear what she’s scared of, but she’s utterly terrified, and acting like her life is seconds away from being snuffed out. There’s clearly something coming for her, and it’s clearly not friendly.
Back in middle-class suburban Detroit, cute teenager Jay’s days are spent at school or hanging around with her sister and friends, evenings with her new boyfriend Hugh. But Hugh has a secret, which he kindly reveals after he has sex with her, drugs her and ties her to a wheelchair in a crumbling, decaying building in the woods. See, Hugh is (obviously) being relentlessly pursued by a supernatural entity that only he can see, and the only way to avoid being ripped apart is to pass on the curse by having sex with some other poor horny sap, who the demon will then latch onto.
But this demon isn’t some fiery-winged Furfur – instead this silent stalking succubus takes the form of a human being, a different one each time depending on its wont, and one that simply walks, and walks, and walks towards you until it finds you and has its violent way with your flesh. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. It’s a terrifying prospect, one both simple and profoundly unnerving. As Jay goes from disbelieving assault victim to fleeing stalking victim her loyal friends stand by her and try to help her overcome a threat they cannot see and no one can understand.
“It Follows” takes a simple, well-covered premise and imbues it with a sense of dread and relentlessness that is so rarely reached in horror films. Like “The Entity” and “Lake Mungo”, the supernatural threat combined with the overt sexuality is skin-crawling and extremely effective, and the fact that the demon could take the form of absolutely anyone, dead or alive, lends a level of suspicion and tension that is palpable throughout, reminiscent of paranoia-laden horrors like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “The Thing”.
Special kudos must go to cinematographer Mike Gioulakis who uses wide, deep shots to imbue familiar urban landscapes with a lingering sense of invisible danger, forcing fearful eyes to race across the screen searching out an approaching threat, reminiscent of John Carpenter and Dean Cundey’s ground-breaking work on “Halloween”. And it’s not only the visuals that hark back to the glories of bruising 70s horror – composer Rich Vreeland does an outstanding job with a soundtrack pulsing with discordant themes, nerve-jangling and jarring throbs that neatly and viscerally mirror the horrors pushing the characters to breaking point. It’s part “Halloween”, part John Cage, and brilliantly discombobulating throughout.
David Robert Mitchell should be credited particularly for delivering a pure, unironic and thrilling horror film and writing in interesting, sympathetic characters who react in recognisable ways to impossible situations. And his performers serve his script with charisma: Maika Monroe is inherently likeable as the pursued Jay, ensuring it is completely understandable why her close friends stick by her as death comes stalking. And London’s own Kier Gilchrist deserves singling out as the nervous boy with the big crush who would do anything to help the beautiful young lady he has seemingly loved for years. It’s a touching performance of adolescent lust, jealousy and ambiguous generosity.
“It Follows” will doubtlessly be most strongly remembered for its genuinely terrifying set-pieces. The first appearance of the demon in the woods as Jay sits bound and prone is a real seat-pusher, reminiscent of crowning moment in “Ringu”, and brilliant sequences on a beach and in a swimming pool make for deeply uncomfortable viewing that are designed to linger long after the film finishes. But it’s the underlying theme here – the life-altering, irreversible threat of carnal relations with someone who can’t be trusted, who will throw your life into freefall and leave you forever haunted by your past – that is both well-worn and refreshingly new in this relentless and troubling guise. And there are some further excellent touches – keep an eye on what shapes the demon takes – that add layers of meaning and guilt to Jay’s plight.
“It Follows” is the kind of new film that all horror fans should celebrate and get behind. It’s well-crafted, unusual, adult and down-right scary. In a world of generic and watered-down PG-13 slop it delivers real, lasting horror without the need for bombast or gore, and paints the world in a slightly different, much creepier light. It made me a little nervy about looking out of the window when I got home late at night, and it’s a rare film that has that kind of effect on a jaded horror-watcher.
But of course it’s not made for me – it’s those silly frolicking teenagers who need to take note and make sure they buck up their ideas and don’t get hit by the worst sexually transmitted horror to ever stalk the earth.
OVERALL SUMMARY
An absolutely fantastic, genuinely terrifying teen horror that takes a simple premise and runs with it to some very disturbing destinations. This tale of a young woman being stalked by a relentless demon just for having sex is imbued with dread and it never lets up for a moment. A brilliant horror debut from David Robert Mitchell, whose career genre fans will doubtlessly be following closely from now on..
