"It Follows" is sure to develop a sizable cult following...

Rating: 8/10 (12 October 2015)

The new 2014 horror film "It Follows" (released earlier this year in March of 2015) is one of the most talked-about horror films to come out in years. "It Follows" is, in many ways, a kind of throwback to the relatively gore-free, atmosphere-rich shock-fests of the 1970s, with films such as "The Exorcist" (1973) and "Halloween" (1978) - the latter of which this film invokes especially during the course of its 100-minute running time. And because of these deliberate invocations of horror films from 40 years ago (while also breaking with a number of well-known horror movie traditions and stereotypes), it's hard to not buy into the high amount of praise "It Follows" has received.
Writer and director David Robert Mitchell has stated in interviews that "It Follows" is rooted in nightmares he suffered from as a child, where he was chased by a malevolent, slow-moving, shape-shifting supernatural entity that followed him everywhere he went. This idea managed to work its way into his second feature, where Detroit teenagers on the cusp of adulthood find themselves stalked by such a supernatural entity.
The film opens unsettlingly enough - and with a pulsating synthesizer score by Disasterpeace (which is another key invocation from the 1970s) - with a scantily-clad young girl running from her house, getting into her car, and driving away. We next see her on the beach, tearfully calling her parents and telling her how much she loves them and that she's sorry for all the bad things that she's put them through. The next morning, the young girl is found brutally murdered.
We're then introduced to Jay Height (Maika Monroe). Jay has a date with a 21-year-old hunk named Hugh (Jake Weary) that starts innocently enough. We next see them having sex in the backseat of his car. From this little encounter, Jay soon finds herself stalked by the malevolent, shape-changing supernatural entity (of Mitchell's childhood nightmares, remember) that will follow her everywhere she goes until it finally kills her - unless she can save herself by having sex with someone else and thus passing the curse along to them (even though we also learn that's really no guarantee she'll be fine - because if it kills the next person she passes it on to, it will come back for her).
So she has to call upon her friends to help her extinguish a lethargic, invisible entity that only she can see, and this does lead to some genuinely frightening moments later on in the film (in particular, a climatic final showdown involving the teens at a community swimming pool).
Many reviewers have also read into this film's events as an allegory on the dangers of STDs and promiscuous sex. When "Scream" (1996) premiered 19 years ago, it commented - albeit satirically - on how it is usually in slasher films ("Halloween," "Friday the 13th," "A Nightmare on Elm Street," etc.), that the virgin always survives and that one of the only ways to not die in a horror movie is to simply abstain from having sex. (This has caused some to analyze some movie slashers such as Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees as moral avengers slaying promiscuous, drug-abusing teenagers and young adults.)
But in "It Follows," that concept is turned on its head: sex is the only way to survive. But the filmmakers are not saying that sex is the key to prolonging one's existence here - however long that may be, since, according to the "rules" surrounding the creature/curse here, there's no guarantee of survival by simply passing "it" along to another person. The filmmakers have commented that the STD comparison is a fair interpretation, but David Robert Mitchell seems to suggest that it's more about the fear of your own mortality - and yet sex in itself, is about living, and connecting, physically and emotionally, with someone else. Personally, I would even go further to suggest the possibility that the film is really more about the fear of the unseen, the unknown - which can also connect to a fear of death, which many people, especially young people, cannot see or comprehend: These teens, in a figurative sense as well as a literal sense, must out-run death, from which there may ultimately be no escape. Really, any interpretation is fair here, and key to understanding the feature.
"It Follows" is one of the best new horror films of the new millennium. It has a low budget, but like a lot of low-budget horror features, it is also stunningly well-made but most importantly, it has ambitions, ideas, that are realized in spite of its financial limitations. I've commented in the past that the British cult classic "The Descent" (2005) is the best and scariest horror movie I've seen so far since the beginning of the 21st century; like "It Follows," "The Descent" was also inspired by horror films of the 1970s, which is perhaps why these two films are so outstanding on a number of levels to me.
This film will definitely require multiple viewings to fully understand everything it has to offer you.
8/10