It Follows Will Follow You ... Yes, I went there

Rating: 8/10 (19 July 2015)

I watch a ton of horror movies, both big and small budget. As a horror junkie, I also spend a lot of time in the social horror communities, discussing our newest finds and buried treasures. Naturally, it is easy to find many studios and sites hyping many a horror film as instant classics, or pushing them as innovative and fresh. Most of these films end up revealing themselves to be mostly forgettable and within a year you find no one talks about them anymore. IT FOLLOWS has been receiving this type of hype, but it's my believe that this movie will prove itself to be one with a lasting impact that will be talked about for quite some time, despite a few weaknesses in the movie.
Some of the film's greatest strengths, but also greatest weaknesses lie in the style of the film, which is the tenet that seems to be getting the most attention when I hear people discussing the movie online. Namely, the way that Mitchell, the director, has been able to emulate so much of what made Carpenter's style recognizable, while still showing his own twist on that style. Mitchell uses his camera in almost an exact style to Carpenter, a style that Carpenter, in turn, had pulled from his western influences and directors like Hawkes. The camera pulls back to wide, stark angles that capture perfect beauty in the static nature of its' scenes, while at the same time capable of zooming in on scenes and using the camera to feel like a character of its' own, stalking the "good guys" from the shadows.
Much like Carpenter, the dialog can sometimes be sparse, allowing the themes and images to play out for the viewer organically, rather than shoving them down our throats with exposition. The biggest thing that the Carpenter aficionado will appreciate is the score, which does not use standard Hollywood strings, or overdone modern rock music. No, my friends, this is a full on unnerving synthesizer assault that is able to be both catchy and creepy.
Of course, the biggest question that the horror fan has to ask is how far Mitchell can push this emulation of Carpenter without pushing into stealing a style, but I think that Mitchell ends up doing an admirable job of reminding viewers of the creator that he clearly looks up to, while at the same time feeling fresh and modern for a new generation of horror fans.
The script and writing, also, do a fantastic job of exploring the themes in this movie. Clearly, using the monster as an analogy for STD, many of remarked on the similarities to the body horror of Cronenberg. I think that the writing goes much beyond that, though. Rather than just seeing a disease destroying our main character, the director looks to the slasher genre and the ideas of an unstoppable, unrelenting force. He uses a monster that is terrifying, at times, and owes much to the slashers as a substitute for his STD, creating something new and unique. Again, though, a hardcore horror fan might ask how many times the genre can plumb the depths of the sexual disease as metaphor for its' horror, but I feel that this movie does a good enough job of creating something new out of it.
I appreciate the way that the writer twists the usual horror conventions, as well. It would be easy to see this is as an obvious metaphor for the virgin facing death as punishment of her sin of sex, but that movie pushes past that overdone trope to show us that, perhaps, it is the ethics and morality of our "final girl" that allows her to, ultimately, put an end to the monster and stop the curse, whereas so many before her chose to escape and pass it on.
The cynics will point out how much of this movie has been done before and they may not be wrong. The acolytes will praise this as something new in the face of a glut of shiny CGI borefests and they are onto something, as well. I found the cynic in me wanted to keep finding reasons to prove that this movie was not worth the hype, but the more I watched of the movie, the more it drew me in and captured my interest and proved to me that there are still great movies being produced in the horror genre every day.