Almost there but not quite

Rating: 5/10 (28 March 2015)

"It Follows" has one of the most refreshing premises in a horror movie I've seen in years.
The premise is nightmarish in the idea that when you become cursed after having sex with someone else who has been cursed, you become relentlessly followed by an unknown entity (without warning or reason) who's only goal is seemingly to kill you. Reminiscent of "The Thing" the unknown entity can take any shape or any form of another human being.
The idea is nightmarish just the thought of being followed by "it" is enough to give someone paranoia walking down the street at night by themselves.
HOWEVER and a big however at that, the film is marred by typical horror clichés, a loss in all plot and back story about "It", and sci-fi channel-esque SFX that bring the movies quality down immensely.
Clichés such as teenage characters running in the forest by themselves at night, or walking towards sounds that the evil entity is clearly making, is just frustrating to watch now, especially when the premise of the story is so great. Really "it" walks at a very slow lumbering pace that can easily be avoided with a light jog or even power walk. After the 2nd encounter the formula just gets old, girl sees monster, loses it, and runs away. I would have loved to seen the characters sit down and really plan out ways to evade the entity, or even ways to study its behavior. It doesn't seem like it would be something thats too hard to even capture.
The SFX are also notably abysmal. Whether it be blood effects and splatter, or even gun smoke coming out of a fired handgun, they're so bad they completely break immersion and is almost laughable. In fact towards the end of the movie I lost that sense of paranoia and really did just start laughing and shaking my head in the theater.
Want to make a movie that works as a homage to old 80's slasher and horror films? Lose the SFX and move on to costumes and props. Please.
It is worth noting that the soundtrack was the movies one redeemable quality, hands down Disasterpeace did a great job.
IN SHORT: What started as a very promising, captivating, and unique story, turned into a mess of teenage characters behaving like typical brainless horror movie protagonists, and a loss of all back story (and story in general) i was anticipating so much to hear about.
5/10 for the soundtrack and premise alone. Great concept, poor execution.