Though you may not realize it — and some of you probably don’t want it — we are in the midst of a horror film renaissance. It’s actually been happening since the beginning of the decade, but it has come more into focus with the fairly closely spaced appearances of The Babadook (2014), What We Do in the Shadows (2014), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) and now It Follows (2015). (If you want to go back to last spring, you can add Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive.) The films have little, if anything, in common apart from genre. They don’t come from one studio or production company. They don’t even come from the same country. There’s no house brand involved. None of them are mainstream releases. They straddle a line between horror picture and art house fare. But what they overall represent is a heady jolt to an often denigrated — if not outright dismissed — genre. Suddenly, the critics have taken note, and movies like It Follows are among the best reviewed around — and not without reason.
While I don’t quite think that David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows is one of the scariest movies ever made, it is certainly one of the most unsettling. It takes that hoariest of 1970s horror tropes — that having sex (especially teens having sex) is bad and that the perpetrators will be punished by an implacable, unstoppable killer — and stands it on its head. Possibly it turns it inside out. The film takes its time explaining the modus operandi of the film’s “monster.” If you wish to leave it to the film, do not read the rest of this paragraph — or any review I’ve seen — before watching the movie. The idea is that the shape-shifting creature (or whatever it is) goes after the last person who has sex, and that person can get out of the path by having sex with someone else, and so on — kind of like passing the videotape in The Ring (2002) but with sex. But there’s a catch — if the thing kills whoever it was passed to, it comes after the previously intended victim again. It constantly changes appearance and is only visible to the infected. It’s not in a hurry, and it can be thwarted (at least briefly), but wherever the victim goes, it follows.
There are many surprises to be discovered within the confines of It Follows — not the least of which is how relatively gore-free it is. When all is said and done, there’s really only one disturbingly (and, yes, it is) graphic image in the movie — and it occurs at the very beginning at the climax of a grabber sequence that only comes to make sense within the larger context of the film. There are occasional shock effects, but Mitchell’s approach to horror is much more subtle than one expects in such a film — especially in one that clearly evokes the horror pictures of the late 1970s and early ’80s. The horror is all about building dread, something the film does by existing in a more or less normal world where everything is just slightly wrong.
Set in the Detroit area — recalling Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive — there’s a seediness to the setting. Urban decay is creeping into the theoretically safe suburbs. The neighborhoods we see haven’t gone to ruin, but everything is shabby and clearly on a downward path. We’re obviously in the present, but two of the main cars in the film are old-style Detroit gas guzzlers. This a movie where kids go to a lower-rung picture palace to see Charade (1963) and where the TVs always seem to be tuned to cheesy black-and-white 1950s sci-fi movies. As in so many ’70s-’80s horror movies, the adults in the film — at least the ones who aren’t “It” — are largely absent or are just so much background noise. I think we see the mother (Debbie Williams) of our heroine, Jay (Maika Monroe), nursing a glass of wine early in the proceedings, but she barely figures in the movie. It’s all plausible but subtly unreal in a way that becomes uneasy, disorienting and finally disturbing — almost like something out of David Lynch.
It helps that all the kids are excellent and well drawn. No one qualifies as your typical meat-on-the-hoof slasher movie teen victim. For a movie that trades in the slightly unreal, the characters feel very real. Maika Monroe is perfect as Jay, but possibly even better is Keir Gilchrist (It’s Kind of a Funny Story) as Paul, the long-suffering neighbor boy who is so in love with Jay that he’s more than willing to sleep with her even if it brings the “curse” down on him. All — or nearly all — of this is beautifully orchestrated by writer-director Mitchell, who is never at a loss for a disconcerting image or camera movement, and who knows just how to have his nameless, shifting horror stalk through a scene. The weakest point lies in the film’s biggest scene (you’ll know it when you see it), which doesn’t quite work. But kudos to Mitchell for settling on an ending that is neither cheesy Horror 101 nihilism, nor quite conclusive. The film is being compared to Halloween (1978), which is understandable, but it feels more like the original A Nightmare on Elm Street in overall tone. Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content including graphic nudity and language.
Playing at Carolina Cinemas.
Is this one going to get an even wider release, I might hold off if its going to play here in the next week or two.
I’d say check the IMDb showtimes for your area on Friday to see. This week should be its widest release, and, frankly, I think it’s too wide.
This was the real deal. A horror film that actually lived up to its hype. No stumble in its third act and it uses its tropes to its benefit. Just a really clever concept that made me question why it hadn’t been done before. It’s so obvious.
I actually think this would have played better had it initially gotten a wide release. The crowd I saw it in was really into it.
Where did you see it?
Well… not in Asheville.
So, yeah, you’re probably right.
My curiosity was more the kind of theater — big box or indie with a penchant for art house.
Ah. It was more on the mainstream side. Granted, I did see a few walkouts, but I can’t imagine the film itself generated them.
That tends to confirm my fear that the big box corporate theaters sticking a tentacle in have hurt the film’s shot at art house longevity.
High on style but ultimately a bit lacking in substance for my taste. I nevrr did feel the sense of dread or uneasiness that I anticipated from so much that’s been written about this film. Oh there were plenty of elements I really enjoyed. And I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for what this director does next. But I just can’t get as excited as many people seem to be about this stylish, somewhat redundant, horror movie that kept me fascinated if slightly frustrated all the while.
Was it better than The Lazarus Effect?
Yes. But it was no Babadook.
I would agree that it’s no Babadook, but I still think it’s pretty swell.
I think I’m pretty firmly in the “this was mostly fantastic” camp, though I’ll have to see how it holds up on a second viewing to be sure. I do find it interesting that the points where I thought the film was at its weakest (the most “exciting” portions of the stuff at the beach and the climactic scene) were where the monster was given its firmest sense physicality and immediacy. It creates a situation that seems inherently tied to the concept where the dread of the thing is always more intimidating than the thing itself, which isn’t really a unique situation in itself and might be close to the point here, but it does set up a kind of dead end when those sequences come around. That said, the concept is so regularly put to brilliant effect and the whole thing is so wonderfully creepy that it’s pretty easy to forgive the things that occasionally don’t pan out.
I think we’re mostly in accord here.
Fantastic and Im thankful got to see it on the last night it’s playing in Asheville. My friends told me I had to see it and they were right. This is a diamond in the rough and proof you don’t need a big budget and gore to make a good horror movie. The love of John Carpenter is all over this thing especially on the soundtrack but that is not a bad thing at all. The movie’s final shot is right up my alley.