"It Follows"? It's stupid! (Read this and more constructive criticisms below!)

Rating: 1/10 (28 March 2015)

The possibility of contracting AIDS. The large number of sexually transmitted diseases. The fear of upsetting your parents or offending someone's religious beliefs. The risk of unexpected pregnancies. Jason Vorhees' rampages in the "Friday the 13th" films. You would think that young people have had enough warnings about the dangers of premarital sex. Apparently not. "It Follows" (R, 1:40) is a horror movie that seems to touch on most of those issues. Or is it none of them? Read on – and I'll try to make more sense than this movie does.
The movie's title can be seen as part of an argument in logic, or simply a statement of fact. For example, "Most professional critics seem to love this movie, so it follows that nearly universal praise should be met with skepticism." In the more literal sense, "It" does indeed follow. "It" follows anyone who has sex with someone who had the curse passed to them by someone else. It can look like anyone – even someone you know. It might appear to you naked, or partially clothed, or fully clothed, but only those cursed can see It. It doesn't move very fast, but It will always find you and, if It gets a hold of you, It will kill you – unless you have sex with someone else and pass the curse on to them first. But if It kills the cursed person before the curse is passed on, the curse reverts to the previous person. The film's opening sequence shows us just how scary the curse can be.
Then we meet Jay (Maika Monroe). According to her friends "it's annoying" how pretty she is. When Jay goes on a date with her new boyfriend, Hugh (Jake Weary), they have sex in the backseat of his car. Afterwards, he reveals that he has passed on to her something much more dangerous than your average STD. He has been followed by It and, in his attempt to shake It off (apologies to all Taylor Swift fans), he has passed the curse on to Jay by having sex with her. He advises her to pass the curse to someone else as soon as possible, he explains the rules to her, he shows It to her (It shows up right on cue), he drops Jay off in front of her house and then disappears. At first, her sister (Lili Sepe) and their neighborhood friends (Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto and Olivia Luccardi) don't understand why Jay is acting this way, but soon find themselves risking their lives to try to keep her from losing hers.
"It Follows" is just dumb. And I'm doing more than just calling names here. I have many questions whose answers (if there are any) reveal how dumb this movie really is. (Warning: Mild spoilers follow.) Writer/director David Robert Mitchell contradicts himself throughout his movie. If the curse is supposed to be symbolic of STDs or just the dangers of premarital sex, then why set up the curse so someone afflicted with it has to pass it on to be free of it? And if It isn't supposed to symbolize any of that, why is this apparition so upset that people have sex in the first place? And where did it come from? Mitchell has said in an interview that the movie was inspired by nightmares he had as a kid and that the problem in the movie can't be solved any easier than you can solve a nightmare while you're in the nightmare. If so, where's the clue that all this is a nightmare and, if it's not, once again, where did It come from and why is It so obsessed with sex? If the cheesy generic horror music, old neighborhoods and old TV shows are supposed to recall the 1970s, then why insert a single piece of technology (an E-reader) that obviously comes from the present? And if the movie takes place in the present, why have generic 1970s horror music, neighborhoods and TV shows? But wait, there's more! (More mild spoilers) Why have a character learn to shoot a gun as a way to fight a supernatural specter? (Aren't they usually impervious to bullets??) When one character has an accident, why choose to have him/her break an arm, then have that character wear a cast and then put that character in water three different times? If someone in the movie comes up with an idea to kill It and the idea doesn't work, why continue to play the scene as if the audience should still be sacred? If a character begins to pursue an idea of how to pass on the curse, why cut away from the scene and never show or say what happened with that plan? Oh, and kids? If you're trying to hide from a very persistent ghoulie which will find you wherever you go, why choose a house in the woods right next to a lake? Have ANY of you seen any horror movies? Ever?? Okay, I better stop now before veins start popping out of my head! I usually don't get so wrapped up in movies' plot holes and logic flaws, but when they are so frequent and so significant as in this movie, they begin to consume anything that is positive. And there is positive here. The premise is fairly original and well, that's all I got. "It Follows"? It's stupid! "D"