Instant classic? It doesn't follow!

Rating: 4/10 (4 March 2015)

It's possibly of some significance that many of the less enthusiastic reviews of this film are from the United Kingdom. I wonder if this says something about the different expectations of audiences here in Britain, or maybe the promotion has simply been over-hyped (yet again).
Now, bear with me. I'd more or less given up on the horror genre despite it being my favourite. As a collector, my shelves groan under the weight of all those classic horror films from the silent era, the Universal golden age, Hammer and, yes, John Carpenter (whose influence weighs so heavily on "It Follows".) I coped with Jason (but not Freddy), and grimaced at Romero's zombies and all the other nasty things that have crawled on to our screens over the last 90 years or so.
But contemporary horror? It just doesn't do it for me. I hate terms like "torture porn" as much as I hate the use of CGI, but sadly, with the likes of Rob Zombie and Eli Roth in the directors' chairs, this is all we seem to get. So when I heard Mark Kermode giving this film a qualified thumbs-up and listened to the hard-to-please critics on Radio Four's Saturday Review wetting their collective knickers over it, I thought I'd give the genre one more try. And I really tried to like it. Honestly, I went with every intention of rediscovering those chills and frissons that drew me to the genre in the first place.
So what did I get? (Possible spoilers follow!)
i) A plot with no rationale. (How did this 'curse' get started? How come no one had heard of it before Greg sleeps with Jay? At least with Michael Myers there's a back story to 'explain' the evil.)
ii) Unlikeable characters - Jay has all the charisma of a cold pizza. They sit around like Generation X bored teenagers from a Larry Clark film (Mark Kermode's point - and I agree). Why any of them would want to have sex with any of the others is hard to believe. Zero personality, zero appeal.
iii) Music that never stops - and I mean never stops. Sub-Carpenter motifs played louder and louder when a few more quiet moments may have helped the suspense.
iv) A dark and gloomy look that seemed too much the result of filters and made me think that the projector bulb was coming to the end its lamp-life! (Yes, I know horror movies often look dark, but NOT dreary.)
v) Scary images that just weren't scary. No spoiler intended, but being threatened by someone urinating as they walked simply made the audience I was with giggle with embarrassment. Unless this was a reference to Regan peeing in "The Exorcist" I simply couldn't see why it was included.
vi) Inconsistent inner logic: one of the few effective scenes was when only Jay could see the threat at the swimming pool and we, the audience, couldn't as we were sharing her friends' POV, so how come in other scenes, WE could see the threat approaching when Jay herself wasn't looking and was unaware! Sorry, fellas, this wasn't thought through fully.
So, no, this is NOT the great modern horror classic which others claim (although it will undoubtedly turn into a franchise culminating, after 16 sequels, with "It Follows: The Musical"). Equally, it is NOT an utter waste of time. The actors do well enough (although Maika Monroe mumbles a lot and I often couldn't tell what she was saying) and the direction is solid if not particularly inventive. But the concept is thin, the suspension of disbelief hard to achieve, and the overall effect underwhelming in the extreme. A fair effort, but one hopes for better. So here's to the next attempt, guys. One day...