Review of It Follows (2015) by Brian C — 03 Mar 2017

It Follows is the kind of movie that you bring up at parties when you want to pretend you have taste.

"Oh, you went to see the latest Saw? No, I'm not really into mainstream horror. Have you seen It Follows? It's more of a cerebral horror film, you know?".

The premise sounds like something a fundamentalist church would make up to scare kids into chastity: out on a date, the main character has sex with a boy. Immediately afterward, he reveals that he's passed on the mother of all STDs: a shapeshifting monster that will slowly but constantly track her down and kill her. The only way she can escape is by sleeping with someone else and passing it down the line.

Shot with an eye for unflattering lighting that would make Terry Richardson proud, and scored with minimal electronic music reminiscent of Drive, It Follows is certainly stylish. Every location in the movie could double as an American Apparel photoshoot. The story drifts from abandoned factory ruin-porn to an instagrammable cabin to a normcore chic suburban living room.

The characters, rock a "bland as cool" aesthetic that instantly made me feel old. Our protagonist (the one being followed by the "It") and her friends sleepwalk through an adult-shaped world where the adults seem mostly absent. Even as an unspeakable horror walks inexorably toward them, they behave like teenagers: pouting and procrastinating, lusting and bloviating. And always, over everything,they project that melodramatic sense of doom every angsty teen has felt. Though unlike most teens, in this case it's completely justified.

Over the course of the movie, with the help of her friends and the boy next door, the girl attempts to escape through various means. What originally looked like a metaphor about the dangers of unprotected sex proves to be a larger exploration of the transition to adulthood and how the discovery of sex and our own mortality are linked.

The running and screaming seems, somehow, more existential than usual. The fear seems more grounded in reality, despite the monster. The requisite sex scenes are less about lust than the loss of innocence and the transience of relationships. Far from turning the characters into sex objects, (there's no actual nudity by the way) they remind the viewer just how young and vulnerable these kids are.

Overall, this is horror for those who like their chills flavored with a little intellectual pretension, a popcorn movie for those who insist that would rather critique than cry out in surprise. If you're looking to be titillated with blood and boobs you're going to be disappointed.

But if you're a college sophomore who needs to bang out a five page paper for your intro to film class, It Follows is a great choice. It's neither as terrifying nor as deep as it would like to pretend, but there's enough in there to earn you an A.