Review of It Follows (2015) by Matthew N — 14 Dec 2016

To begin with, let me state my bias. I'm a fan of all genres of film because a good film is a good film regardless of the genre. I've always gravitated towards science fiction, fantasy, and epics, but I would also consider myself a fan of horror. I'm no horror buff, but there are certainly a lot of really good horror films out there. This is one of them.

It Follows has a pretty simple premise. There's a monster that follows a host until either it catches and kills him or her, or it's passed along to the next host through sexual intercourse. Only hosts and previous hosts are capable of seeing it, which leads to a large portion of the conflict depicted. The principles set aren't complicated, but they have profound indications.

A common trope of modern horror film is that they aren't actually horror films but more just mildly scary. They throw unsettling images on the screen and subject the audience to shallow jump scares. While for a moment they make hearts pound and anxiety rise, they're short lived and often times leave the audience laughing when all is said and done instead of terrified.

A good horror film, and for that matter most film, by contrast, is determined by one simple thing: its appeal to empathy. Action movies make the audience feel invigorated, comedies make them feel amused, horrors make them petrified. The ones that stand out, though, are the ones that appeal to empathy. They set themselves apart because while they fulfill their other purpose, they also reach into the viewer and reveal something profound about their inner person or that of other people. It Follows does this flawlessly.

On a surface level, It Follows is about the AIDS epidemic or STI's in general. The monster, analogous with the infection, is spread primarily through sex, and it follows the victim all their life, like AIDS, until it kills them. If it doesn't kill them, though, the threat is still always present, and the infected have to always metaphorically look over their shoulder, continuously aware of the condition.

I don't have AIDS or another STI, though. What the film does well is it conveys the feelings of people who are in those sorts of situations to me. It makes me feel what they feel, so I'm empathetic to their lives.

Under the surface level, though, it does have further reaching messages that appeal to more than just those with STI's. It makes me think more specifically about people who are paranoid, those with anxiety, and others who have PTSD. They have conditions which the outside world isn't able to see, much like the It. They can feel like the only people who can understand them are the ones who are plagued by the same problems, but It Follows reaches out to its audience and shows them how these sorts of people are forced to live their lives. They can manage their conditions and they can run away from them, but they are always behind them, always following, and that's the brilliance of the film, and the brilliance of film as a whole. It makes the audience feel what others feel, completely abstract concepts even, and makes them understand their lives.

This is unquestionably one of the best horror films to date and ranks up there with the likes of The Thing and The Shining, at the absolute peak of its genre.

5/5.