Maika Monroe (Radius-TWC)A terrified young woman runs out of her house onto a suburban street that looks like something out of John Carpenter’s Halloween. Autumn leaves have fallen around her, but on what must be a cool day, she’s wearing only lingerie. Her father asks what’s the matter and she denies that anything’s wrong, but she soon gets in her car and drives to the beach, where, in a long shot that emphasizes her loneliness, she calls her loved ones, knowing the end is near.
It Follows, a new horror movie from director David Robert Mitchell (The Myth of the American Sleepover), is inspired by classic slasher movies, but it takes them in a more somber direction. Mitchell smartly sets up the plot in the film’s early scenes. We meet Jay (Maika Monroe) floating in her backyard pool, enjoying what presumably is one of the last days she can enjoy this summer. School is in session, and she has a date with a new boy, Hugh (Jake Weary, whose real name suits his character). They’re seeing a movie at the Redford, a repertory theater showing Charade. Waiting in line to get tickets, Jay asks Hugh to play a game with her. Look at the people around you and pick someone who you want to trade places with, and she’ll try to guess who, and why. Hugh picks a five-year old kid because “his life is still ahead of him.” You soon learn that Hugh probably wishes he could turn back time, and that Jay’s game is more prescient than she knows.
They end up skipping Charade, though its tale of multiple identities mirrors what follows (and is maybe a too clever reference – would these kids really be interested in Charade?) The film’s boogeypeople are a twist on the old slasher movie trope where the sexually active teen becomes a target of violence. The only way to drive away the evil of It Follows is to pass on the curse through sex. That encourages the kids to sleep with someone they don’t care about because they will be killed.
The curse is passed on through sex, but much of what follows these kids in the full bloom of their youth is a look at their mortality and what to expect when their bodies begin to fail them. The film’s sex scenes don’t show any young flesh, reserving its nudity for bodies you may not want to see naked.
Along with Buzzard (see my Spectrum Culture review here), this is the second recent movie to set troubled youth amid the ruins of Detroit. These films are melancholy observations of the bleak future that seems to face young people today. Both address the attractiveness and destructive nature of technology, but for the most part It Follows embraces old tech as the kids drive around in old cars and watch old movies on ancient box TVs. There’s no sign of contemporary pop culture at all, save for a girl’s pink clamshell eBook reader (she’s reading The Idiot).
It Follows has been called one of the scariest movies to come down the cinepike in ages, and though I jumped a few times, it didn’t chill me to the marrow. But this low-budget film is highly atmospheric, beautifully photographed, and features an evocative score by Rich Vreeland, who takes some of John Carpenter’s minimalist score for Halloween and adds the sound of dark electronic library music. It Follows takes cues from ‘70s horror movies, but it also creates its own creepy atmosphere.
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It Follows
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell
With Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi.
Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content including graphic nudity, and language
Running time 100 minutes
Opens today at West End Cinema, Angelika Pop Up, AFI Silver and Angelika Mosaic.
