It Follows (2015)

The theme of the horror film It Follows - that our personal demons will, inevitably, catch up to us - is nothing new. The execution, however, reinvents past tropes in such a unique way that it reminded me why I fell in love with the genre in the first place.

From zombies to body snatchers, from Jaws to Jason, the demonic Energizer Bunny has been the core of most horror films since inception - for good reason. Nothing is more terrifying than feeling completely helpless as a force (seen or unseen) is single-minded in its focus to achieve one goal: to fuck you up. It Follows is no different, but David Robert Mitchell's screenplay manages to strip away all the pretense and exposition from those earlier entries and gives us the barest version of the concept of relentless evil since the original Halloween's Michael Myers - a.k.a. "The Shape."

And boy, It Follows is not only a love letter to that film, but also an evolutionary genre-busting take on it (think Unforgiven vs. spaghetti westerns). Early on I felt I could be watching a film from the Halloween canon: the Carpenter-like synth, the long, steady cam shots of teens walking through their suburban neighborhood chatting about nothing in particular, and the filming of mundane domestic locations as if they were hiding... something. We are waiting for the first glimpse of the killer from the first scene, waiting for the jump scare that we are so very conditioned to getting (and from then on, over and over, in accordance with most modern horror). Thankfully, It Follows is better than that.

And this works to the film's benefit.  Oh, we get the killer alright, but not before we get the rules by which this particular menace presents itself. And the rules are, for the most part, presented simply and believably. Just as you start to question the supernatural elements, your head is spinning, contemplating the physical constraints. From then on, I was examining every inch of every frame, scrutinizing boundaries. How many exits are there? About how much time do they have? Just how creative is this monster, and how can the characters interact with it?

I had a ton of fun micromanaging my eyeballs during It Follows,  and Mitchell's camera perfectly exacerbates that feeling of unease. People move through frame, behind other characters, and there is always a glimmer of movement in the background. Even scenes that would exist only to pass on key plot points are framed so they are never taken for granted. In the opening scene, the lead character inexplicably drives to the ocean. When, later in the film, the characters find themselves at the beach again, it dawns on you "oh shit that's why!" It's a moment that really pays off, and I felt even more anxiety than they they did. I knew it was a horror film, and, sorry fellas nice try but it won't help and there is probably not a Rational Explanation for All of This.

The way the dread piles on to itself as the film goes on is wonderfully, uniquely oppressive. Similar to The Final Destination, "The Shape" here is also somewhat Shapeless but also bound to the real world in such a way that the characters have the illusion of agency. The aforementioned rules continue to remind you that there is really no respite from the inevitable, and, in the case of one scene, takes a creative mind to even try to break free of it. It's a cruel element of the screenplay that lulls us in to believing this thing can be beaten. You can decide for yourself if that actually works out at the end.

Sure, the movie works as a commentary on personal baggage, promiscuity, coming of age, and the things we are willing to do for the ones we love. But where It Follows works best is in its ability to turn the coldly mechanical in to the emotionally and physically draining. It's my favorite movie of the year and will go down as one of my favorite horror movies of all time.

Recommend: Uh, yeah, it's a horror film with 95% on RottenTomatoes. How often does that happen?
Gore factor: 3/10
Pants-shitting factor: 10/10