Hot Pursuit

DISCLAIMER: EVERYTHING FROM HERE ON BELOW IS AT MINIMUM 6 YEARS OLD AND OUT OF DATE! BUT….POSTERITY?

Horror is created with minimal effects, and suspense trumps all in David Robert Mitchell’s (writer/director) stylish film It Follows.(2014)

Oh sweet, sweet nostalgia

Oh sweet, sweet nostalgia

Right from the film’s opening sequence (a bewildered young girl flees from something invisible), It Follows has a retro vibe. It’s closed in suburb streets evoke Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and a host of others. The eerie synth pop and heart pounding booms of music lend well to this vintage feel. In fact, the entire film is set in some alternate, unknown era with minimal technology and heavy floral patterns. This inexplicably dated timelessness works. It has the viewer feeling like something is familiar. ….but just a little off.

It Follows is the story of a curse, transmitted by sex, that leaves it’s victims with far worse than a course of antibiotics and an embarrassing itch. This curse unleashes ‘It’. It can take the form of any human. And it’s scary power? Walking purposefully towards you.

Doesn’t sound scary, I know, but within minutes after our heroine Jay (Maika Monroe) is infected, she is being pursued by It. It looks perfectly human, except for that dead eyed stare that penetrates your very soul. Can anyone relate to that feeling of wanting to lean away from the TV when the ghost/killer/demon approaches it?? Yeah, that’s this whole movie.

Jay learns from her (now ex) boyfriend that she must stay away, she must evade this thing, and she must pass it on. And that next victim must live and pay it forward, because it keeps coming back. If the next person dies, it comes for her again. Not so subtle subtext about thinking before you get busy, yes? The consequences could be dire, could be lurking, searching for you, waiting to end it all. Life changing repercussions, indeed.

Jay, with the help of a crew of fairly typical teens, manages to evade It over and over, all the while convincing the others that it is real. Did I mention that you can only see it if you are infected?? Enter the ‘everyone thinks I’m crazy’ subplot.

This film manages to create a very viable sense of doom and dread and, admittedly some pulse pounding scares. What makes it innovative is that it does this on the strength of tone and suspense alone. It doesn’t rely on cgi nor on gore and shock value. Though there is a scene in which It makes invisible (laughable) cgi contact with a victim, the moment serves more to convince Jays friends of its seriousness than the viewer. Somehow, right from its first shadowy stroll towards Jay, staring purposefully into her eyes, we are convinced. We know this isn’t something you want catching up with you, and we don’t need to figure out exactly why to turn and run.

That feeling of being followed, pursued, by something relentless (not to mention shape-shifting into some fairly disconcerting individuals ) is what drives this film. It cuts to the core of fear, it feels like a recurring nightmare and it is shockingly effective.

Monroe, as our lead actress, is adept, and the best of the bunch. Her counterparts tend to feel a little wooden and weak. Character development, for that matter is virtually non existent, and is something that could’ve been improved, but doesn’t detract significantly.

The set design is clever, and lends to that unsettling tone, as each room and home feels somehow frozen in an unidentifiable time. The film seems to be set in Detroit (though it’s not directly expressed) and the city’s abandoned streets and homes feel lonesome and menacing, hopeless and insidious. The setting feels almost like a character in itself, this bleak and unsafe land that surrounds the group. The kids discuss being taught the safe zones of the suburbs, the volatile sense of the city. It looms over them, offering no solace.

It Follows is a film that feels like the sort they just don’t make anymore. It scares, for real, with an unexplored monster, a slow and plodding thing that has you in its sights. And it follows.

The horror hating husband watched this one with me, and later expressed that we have too many windows in our house, thank you very much.

Life lessons (I’ve been slipping, I know)
1. I can’t say this enough, keep it in your pants!! This is the ultimate ‘never have sex’ horror-rule movie.
2. I don’t care how much you disrespect your mother, you wake that bitch up and you get her involved.
3. Never take running shoes for granted.
4. Know your exits.
5. Watch your back. Always watch your back.

No matter what, it follows.