The slasher resurgence spawned by Scream nearly two decades ago is dead and buried. The once-annual torture fetish series, Saw, has lain dormant for five years. Meanwhile, the found-footage haunted houses of the Paranormal Activity films have all but given up the ghost. Crazes in horror movies come and go in waves, and It Follows, the new independent film that rode on a slow and steady tide of critical acclaim to a wide-scale release, is a herald of the current and quite welcome craze: quality.
Set in the indeterminate present, but with a distinctly ’80s vibe, the one whom it follows is 19-year-old Jay Height (Maika Monroe). Monroe plays Jay with a natural cool as a community college townie and with a deep paranoia and loss of innocence later as the target of the relentless It. It is a type of curse, a sexually transmitted ghost (STG) Jay contracts after sleeping with her new boyfriend Hugh. Hugh lays down the rules of the It for Jay and the audience: it can look like anyone; it only walks but it never stops; don’t let It touch you, etc. There are more rules but I don’t want to ruin the fun. Suffice it to say, It Follows takes the slow-walking stalker tropes and treats them right. With few jump scares, It Follows creates a deeper sense of foreboding terror because of its slower pace. The camera lingers on the creepy It just a little too long for comfort and is more unsettling for it. And, in a refreshing twist, the film never breaks its own rules, and the characters never act illogically (a plague that needs curing in the horror genre).
It Follows is proof-positive that originality is overrated. Writer, director and triple-first-namer David Robert Mitchell claims he got the idea from a recurring anxiety nightmare where he was relentlessly stalked by a slow-moving figure. I’m sure his dreams got the idea from watching Halloween, however, as It Follows occurs in an autumn-beset suburb that could be the cousin of Haddonfield. From the ever-walking menace to the excellent synth-driven soundtrack by the unfortunately named Disasterpeace, from the sex-anxiety allegories to the gorgeous wide-frame cinematography (the panning shots perfectly highlight the background and off-camera spaces where anyone seen walking conjures a palpable dread), everything that is borrowed is made new again in the deft hands of Mitchell and his outstanding cast and crew. Like last year’s The Babadook, It Follows is yet another example of independent horror showing Hollywood how it’s done. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
