The hype is ridiculous, but this is a pretty good horror film

Rating: 7/10 (30 March 2015)

Wow! I've never quite heard such angry grumbling over a movie when the lights came up before. The word "horrible" was being thrown around generously, so much so that the teenage girl waiting to clean up the theater afterword commented on how angry everyone was. No, I'm not quite with these people (the theater was loaded at 11 AM, for the record), but this was a major disappointment. Much like the desperately overrated The Babadook, this is a somewhat clever horror movie that sort of bucks mainstream horror conventions. Just because it's better than most horror movies (and, believe me, I had to sit through half an hour of terrible-looking horror previews to see this movie - if you want a good laugh look up Unfriended on Youtube) doesn't make it anything fantastic.
Maika Monroe (pretty but thankfully not boringly pretty like the protagonists in most horror movies) sleeps with her new boyfriend for the first time, and is in for a rude awakening. He knocks her out and ties her to a wheelchair. When she wakes up, he explains that some mysterious, murderous entity, in the guise of a random person, will follow her until it is able to kill her. She is advised to find someone quick and pass on the curse, although, if the next person is killed, it will come after her again. Monroe, her sister and their friends attempt to run away from the thing, but escape proves impossible.
There is definitely some cleverness in the filmmaking. I love the way Mitchell makes you scan every frame of the film to search for the next follower. The film is never that scary, but it does raise some nice tension. There are some big flaws, though. The monster, when it appears, is usually pale with sunken, dark eyes, and it thus resembles a lot of modern horror ghosts and zombies (similar monsters appeared in three or four previews before the movie). The monster even hisses at one point. Lame. The film's biggest mistake is the climax, where the characters suddenly become total morons. My enthusiasm for the film fell a lot during the sequence. The characters in general are pretty bland, though they're perhaps a tiny bit better than your average horror film (I did quite like Monroe's performance). I loved the John Carpenter-esque score.