It Follows (2014)

It Follows begins with a young woman on the run, driving to the beach in the middle of the night. She has one last phone conversation with her family and looks fearfully into the distance. In the dark, the lights emanating from her car give the night a demonic red glow. We don’t see her death, but we do see the gruesome aftermath the next morning. As established in the prologue and suggested by the title, there is something vague and threatening that makes its presence known throughout the film.

After the opening, we are introduced to Jay (Maika Monroe) who during the first act ends up having a terrible date. They’d just had sex when he chloroforms her and ties her up to a wheelchair to explain that there is a curse passed via intercourse. A monster that can take on the appearance of anyone, visible only to those who have been affected, will start following her with the intent to kill. If it gets her, it will come after him again, and if it gets him, then go after whoever gave it to him. She can pass on the curse to someone else, but even that would not hold it off forever. The curse has put them all on a hit list of a single entity that will work its way down, beginning with the most recently afflicted individual, and it is permanent.

A long tradition in horror is that characters that have sex usually fall victim to the serial killer or monster. The premise here is like that taken to an exaggerated level, but the film itself avoids moralizing or becoming exploitative and gross. Too often, horror movies opt for excess to make up for a lack of quality. Luckily, David Robert Mitchell, who wrote and directed, focused on creating a tense and grounded atmosphere. One might favorably compare it to John Carpenter’s first Halloween, which is a more graphic movie, but remains suspenseful and shocking as the characters are stalked and brutally dispatched one by one.

The cast of characters makes the narrative interesting. Initially comprising of Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Yara (Olivia Luccardi), and Jay’s sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), the group soon brings Greg (Daniel Zovatto), a neighbor friend who used to be closer, into the fold as he decides to help them investigate. The two guys have contrasting appearances and personalities (Paul is dorky while Greg has a “bad boy” image and is frequently seen with different girls), but both demonstrate an attraction to Jay, which doesn’t lead to the predictable conflicts but does highlight Paul’s awkwardness. Maika Monroe’s performance as Jay, expressing everything from lovestruck to confusion to fear, feels authentic, and like in The Guest, she shows a mix of strong survival instinct and vulnerability.

More importantly, these people feel like an organic group of friends that grew up in the suburbs together and visit each other’s homes (mainly Jay’s), with their internal dynamics, inside jokes, and past history. Set in Detroit and surrounding area, the movie is gorgeously shot and captures the divide between the blighted neighborhoods in the city and the suburbs, which Yara also mentions in a conversation. For teenagers, sex is made out to be exciting, frightening, or dangerous (as parodied in Mean Girls, “if you have sex… you will die”), and the director (who was present at the screening I attended in Detroit and did a Q&A after) has mentioned that the basic idea behind the monster came to him in a nightmare. With this in mind, it seems very appropriate for the film to be a coming of age story with a horror premise. It Follows is atmospheric and unsettling, but it’s also very much a coming of age story that deals with themes of sexual maturation, recognizing mortality, and the realization that suburbia might be a cover for something sinister.

Mitchell does not shy away from graphic images, and it’s all backed by an ominous score that recalls classic horror movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s, bolstering a creepy atmosphere and driving up a feeling of panic. A retro-style score feels like a growing trend, and I’m sure I’ll get tired of it eventually, but it works very well here. Of course there are jump scares and fake outs, and some of these moments provide levity when a character’s panic is revealed to be unnecessary. (I was also amused by a scene when Paul tries to be heroic and gets thrown across a beach by the monster for his troubles, but that was probably not intentionally humorous and might have just been me.)

One of the best moments takes place when Jay and her neighbor friend Greg, who unwittingly ends up getting involved, look into the past of the man who gave her the curse. Using an old photograph found at his abandoned residence, they arrive at the high school he graduated from in order to learn his identity, with the hopes of tracking him down and finding out more about her predicament. The camera slowly rotates from the perspective of the hallway, making a full circle. The camera catches glimpses of the characters speaking with someone in the school office (their voices muted), the crowds of students at the school, and at one point there is noticeably a figure walking across the grass approaching, while the score drones on menacingly.

As demonstrated in the scene mentioned above, the film’s effectiveness comes from its ability to generate a constant feeling of dread and paranoia. The monster’s ability to look like anyone and single-mindedness gradually wears away at the victim psychologically, forcing the targets to constantly look over their shoulders, question their sanity and feel more isolated as the monster is invisible to everyone else. There is a surprisingly low body count for a teen horror film, but the threat emanating from the unknown and the leads’ apparent vulnerability heighten the effectiveness far more than gory kills and a high death toll could.

It Follows began with limited release but expanded this weekend. Also the director is from the Metro Detroit area, which is always nice to see.