'It Follows' Doesn't Follow Teen-Horror Rules

Rating: 7/10 (17 July 2016)

"It Follows" (2014) is almost the opposite of the typical teen horror flick.
It's an indie-style suspense film rather than a slick, studio slasher romp. No himbos or playmates in an exotic locale, just average-looking teens in a blue-collar suburb of Detroit. It has a gritty, low- budget look that fits its setting, without bloody special effects. The cast includes nobody you've ever heard of, though lead actress Maika Monroe appears in this summer's "Independence Day: Resurgence."
"It Follows" upends the horror-morality trope in which the sexually active die first and only the pure survive. In this case, the "haunting" literally is a sort of STD (sexually transmitted demon). One passes it to another, who then will be stalked by the zombie-like presence.
Our heroine, Jay Height, has back-seat sex with her new boyfriend (not on the first date). Afterward, she wakes bound, with the now-panicked boyfriend telling her she needs to pass on the haunting to someone else. She's a chick, he basically says; it should be easy for her to find another guy willing to have sex. He urges her to do it quickly, too, because if she died first, the haunting would revert back to him.
The moral dilemma, then, is whether she should do unto others as he did to her – or, with the help of her friends, find some other way to shed the haunting.
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Stu Robinson practices writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.