By Tristan Bishop
Those of us who have been horror fans for a number of years tend to be immune to most attempted ‘scares’, mostly because we know the tropes all too well and can read the signposts to the next shock moment. So whilst the average viewer might be jumping out of their chair in surprise, we find ourselves with a contented smile enjoying the familiar signalling and revealing, often able to guess the exact second when a film is about to try and scare the living wits out of you (and how it might be going to do it). The process of watching a horror film can therefore become an exercise in ticking off the expected tropes of the genre. But occasionally a film comes along which pulls the rug out from under our feet and leaves us stranded at the proverbial sea, clutching desperately for the lifebelt of a predictable story development. If you’ll forgive me for the dodgy metaphor, I’m trying to tell you that It Follows is one of those films. In plainer terms, it’ll scare the crap out of you.
David Robert Mitchell’s second feature film (after the indie comedy The Myth Of The American Sleepover) finds us in Detroit, following 19 year old Jay (a very engaging Maika Monroe), a normal girl who likes swimming in her outside pool and hanging with her friends and sister watching 50’s sci-fi movies. Jay has arranged a date with a 21 year old chap, but when they go to the cinema (replete with live organ player!) he sees something that freaks him out and they leave. Suspecting an ex-girlfriend to have been on the scene, Jay nevertheless agrees to another date. This one appears to go slightly better as, after a romantic walk through some nearby countryside, they end up having sex in his car. However, things soon turn sour as he immediately knocks her out with chloroform. When she comes round she finds herself tied to a wheelchair in an abandoned building. Her date reappears to explain himself – something is following him, and he can only get rid of it by having sex, in which case the ‘something’ will start following the person he had sex with. And if the ‘something’ catches you, it will kill you (as foreshadowed in an opening sequence where a young girl flees an unseen assailant and ends up as a dead, broken body on a beach). However, it’s not all that straightforward. Firstly, if the ‘something’ catches its intended victim, it will then go after the original person who ‘passed it on’. Secondly, the ‘something’ is only visible to the person it is stalking, and the people it has previously stalked, and it can take the form of any person, young or old, and often that of people you love. Jay is given the opportunity to see the ‘something’ (at this point a naked woman slowly walking towards her) before her date flees with her and dumps her outside her house. The film then follows Jay and her friends in their attempts to outrun or outwit the supernatural stalker.
It’s a clever little twist on the ‘have sex and die’ trope of slasher movies, of course – but unlike Cherry Falls (2000) in which the killer only preyed on virgins, leaving a town full of teens desperate to lose their collective virginities, this adds an extra layer of moral conflict: should Jay attempt to ‘pass this on’, whilst possibly condemning those she has slept with to death? Or is there another way to deal with the threat? The film offers no easy answers for Jay, or, in fact, the audience; we’re never really given any back story or explanation for the creature, and in a couple of instances scenes are set up and then we are left to imagine them ourselves. Of course, our own imaginations are the scariest things we could come into contact with, and this is one of the ways the film gets under your skin. Mitchell wrote the script as well as directing, and his sure hand is evident at every level here, from naturalistic dialogue for the teen characters (incidentally there are only a couple of very small speaking roles for anyone over the age of 20), to effective camera movements which range from familiar POV stalking to full-on 360 degree pans designed to disorientate and foster an atmosphere of claustrophobic dread. The soundtrack by Rich Vreeland (whose previous work was on acclaimed indie video game Fez) compliments perfectly, ranging from unsettling drones to nauseous screeches, and even some John Carpenter/Fabio Frizzi-inspired synth business. Even the Detroit locations, ranging from Jay’s home in suburbs which look remarkably like those in Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), to the notoriously rundown ‘8 Mile’ are used effectively. But the real scare trump is the Follower itself, who, whichever guise it appears in (occasionally naked or decomposing), disturbs with its slow pace (it always walks) and single-minded purpose.
In the end It Follows works on a couple of different levels – it could be read as an allegory on the difficulty of sexual relations in teenage America, or it can be enjoyed as a straightforward horror film. Whichever way you watch the film however, It Follows is the most genuinely terrifying film in years, and will stay with you long after your initial viewing. Case in point – I exited the screening around 9pm, and the walk to Tottenham Court Road on my own in the dark was one of the edgiest experiences of my life. I swear I looked over my shoulder more than once, although I couldn’t see anything. But that doesn’t mean that nothing was there, does it?
It Follows hits UK cinemas on 27th February via Icon, French cinemas on February 4th, and US screens on March 27th.