Perfect? No. Daring and creepy? Yes.

Rating: 8/10 (11 October 2015)

This is one of those movies that's generated so many polarized opinions that it's hard to sift through them all. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor: stop scrolling through reviews right now and go watch it. "It Follows" isn't perfect, and some people might find it genuinely ridiculous, but it's original enough to deserve being viewed with fresh eyes and an open mind.
What hooked me was the essentially nightmarish quality of the premise: an inexplicable "thing" following you, relentlessly, no matter what. You can run, as they say, but you can't hide. "It" often takes forms that are (seemingly) non-threatening yet incongruous: a hospital-gowned old woman in a school hallway, for instance. By its very premise, this movie builds an atmosphere of dread that I've never felt before. The first time a character makes note of a "person" that he quickly discovers no one else can see was almost unbearably tense.
However, the monster in "It Follows" does fall into the trap that all such heavily rule-based creatures fall into: you'll spend most of the movie thinking of creative ways to beat it. This is especially so in the second half, where all the characters are trying to plan out exactly that. It also starts getting weighed down a bit by the sexual drama, some of which is a little groan-worthy (case in point: the boy who seems completely willing to inherit a death curse if it means he can sleep with his friend). These two negatives might be enough to kill the experience for some - I thought the acting (especially from lead Maika Monroe) was good enough to pull me through when another movie might have lost me completely.
"It Follows" seems to be a love/hate it kind of movie, and one you'll really need to form your own opinions on. I won't extol it as "the best thing to happen to horror in years", but it's a nicely constructed and brave little film worth seeing - if only to find out what everyone's talking about!