I’ve been thinking for a few years now that everybody just FORGOT how to make good horror movies. Turns out I was wrong, because It Follows is a killer. It’s gonna be a classic. At the very least, it’s one of those movies so subtly freaky, so well-made and such a great idea that it’s a lot of fun to talk about afterwards. Here’s as much as I want to tell you before you’ve seen it: Some evil thing focuses on one victim at a time and it just… follows them around. It always looks like a person except with zombie rot or piss dripping out of their pants or maybe they’re stark naked. It doesn’t run, it doesn’t fly, it doesn’t drive. Rather, it simply walks, determined but in no rush. Also, every time you see it, it looks completely different. AND, if you’re its target, you’re the only person who can see it. AND if it gets hold of you, you’re dead. And that death ain’t pretty.
Some of this film’s genius is the same genius in John Carpenter’s old Halloween. In that film, you watch the whole screen for the psycho killer to pop up anywhere anytime, background or foreground. It Follows pulls off the same trick, but maybe does it even better. To watch this film is to constantly watch the backgrounds, the doorways, the windows and even the extras in the distance for something freaky to happen. It achieves an effect that’s excitingly cinematic, workable in no other form of storytelling except the movies.
So, what’s It Follows REALLY about? Sexually transmitted diseases is the obvious theme (writer/director David Robert Mitchell pounds his hammer on that one), but there are other places where an astute viewer can go. Death itself, for one, always following us around, patiently waiting for us to have a bad day in traffic or nurture malignant cells in our bodies. Every day lived straight through is a day you escaped The Big Inevitable. A person with a felony conviction that prevents them from having a normal life might have their own reading of this film, as would a stalking victim. You can go to so many places here. That’s one reason why it’s great.
Another thing I like about this one: it’s on the shortlist of modern horror films that don’t set up a sequel. The ending falls on a perfect note. Anything more would spoil the dark beauty here. If this becomes a hit and someone decides to make a sequel, I “boo” them in advance.