Review: ‘It Follows’

A film that focuses on atmosphere and sustaining a sense of pure dread, “It Follows” is the most interesting and well made horror movie since 2012’s “Cabin in the Woods.” Imagine knowing that you are always being stalked by an unknown, unnamed thing, something horrible that brings only doom with it, and you keep running but it always catches up eventually, always there, ready to get you, and no matter how long you prolong it, you know that it will get you eventually. That is “It Follows.”

Jay (Maika Monroe, “The Guest“) meets Hugh (Jake Weary) and after a few dates, they have sex. This kind of thing happens. But what happens immediately after this? Not so common. Very shortly after the sex, Hugh informs Jay that there is some sort of thing out there, a supernatural entity that can take the shape of any person, and it will start coming after Jay, slowly yet steadily walking towards her at all times. She can even get in her car and drive far away from it, but it will eventually show up again, stalking her wherever she goes and if it ever catches her, it will kill her in some absolutely horrific way. This happened as a direct result of her sexual encounter with Hugh, who “passed it on” to her, and he instructs her to sleep with someone else to pass it on, hoping that this thing keeps going right down the line.

The rest of the movie is foreboding, imminent ruin, as the mounting fear of this unknown thing constantly being out there somewhere takes over the entire film. The sound of distant footsteps echoing down a hallway is transformed into the soundtrack of creeping death. The sight of a normal looking person walking directly at you turns into intense fear. Sitting in a room without windows becomes scary because now you can’t SEE it coming, even though you know for sure it is out there, it IS coming, and it is coming for you and only for you. And the fact that it is constantly changing appearance and sometimes looks like people you know and love? That doesn’t make it any easier at all.

Due to the sexual component of the story, it is impossible to not see this as a metaphor for sexually transmitted disease. I mean, you have sex with someone who has this thing following them, and it immediately starts following you, with the endgame being death and only death. How is that not like a deep seeded fear of AIDS or having the life long mark of an incurable disease? But really it’s more than that, more than just herpes or whatever. This thing following them? It is death itself, it is imminent and it is truly scary unless you resign yourself to it. No matter how much you run or what precautions you take, it will always be coming for you.

And “It Follows” does such a great job of getting this feeling across. There are long, steady camera shots in which we see a figure in the background coming closer and closer, even seemingly mundane shots of backyards and fences and tree lines become filled with menace and possible danger because we are always looking for something to emerge from the darkness or pop around the corner. And the score gets intense, lots of droning synthesizers and rumbling bass, really adding to the sense of building terror that grows within the characters, as they find themselves constantly on the run, always fearing for their lives. There is a singular vision and focus in this movie and it doesn’t stray from this conceit at all, as every scene is about both story and character and moves the film forward in a compelling and always interesting way. It never takes any tangents, there are no unnecessary characters or scenes, the movie just plows forward.

Part of what makes this movie work and will likely make it a movie that will stand the test of the time is how timeless the movie seems, in that much of the production design screams late 70s and early 80s suburban America, and the characters just watch old black and white sci-fi movies on old tube televisions, but then while no one uses a cell phone ever there is one person with an electronic reader shaped like a clam shell, so that means the story doesn’t take place in the past but instead seems to take place in some sort of alternate universe, a place that is now but is also stuck in time. Shooting most (if not all) of this movie in Detroit and really taking advantage of the landscapes and abandoned neighborhoods and lingering depressed feeling of the city definitely goes a long way to establishing this sense of place, and specifically of a place that is modern but also stuck in the past, and not necessarily in a good way.

“It Follows” is just so well made, it is such a great movie, definitely one of the best horror movies made in years, and easily the best movie of 2015 so far. I am definitely looking forward to revisiting this very intense and interesting movie again.