Scary in a Blair Witch Project/Halloween kind of way

Rating: 6/10 (28 March 2016)

A lonesome girl sitting in a classroom, looks outside on the schoolyard. A moving white shape can be seen far away. The girl doesn't at first notice anything odd about it, but after a while it's clear that the shape is a human being heading straight towards her. In panic, she grabs her things and quickly leaves the classroom.
It Follows is written and directed by the relatively unknown David Robert Mitchell. It's about the girl Jay, who after a sexual encounter with a guy, "gets infected" by some sort of curse that starts to constantly follow her. It Follows is a low budget film made with only 2 million dollars, a small sum in today's measurements. Interestingly though, Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project were made with only about 20 000 dollars. Money isn't everything in the world of horror films.
In the beginning of It Follows we follow the story mostly from a distant. The camera never really gets close and we feel more like a spectator, not really involved in the story. Later in the film we get drawn deeper in and our spectator role changes to a subjective perspective. Joy's perspective. This enhances the effect of the curse that's following her. In the beginning we were one in the crowd, watching, but later we turn into the one looking for the stalker in the crowd. The music in It Follows is very electronic and feels like a mix of David Lynch's companion Angelo Badalamenti and Giorgio Moroder. It really enhances the creepy feeling that lies like a cloth throughout the film.
It Follows leaves me both impressed and disappointed at the same time. It's well crafted and the for me totally unknown cast does its job acting like typical teenagers in a horror flick. But, I still think the film falters a bit in the middle, and then even more towards the end. Once the story is laid out for us, it's like the film gets stuck. Where should we go next? This in turn seems to lead to more classic horror film clichés being used, which is a pity because the film started rather unconventionally. The ending does save the film, and without saying too much I do like it when a film leaves room for interpretations and personal thinking.
David Lindahl - www.filmografen.se