Aubrey MaloneIt Follows
(16)
Time was that horror films were located in places like Transylvania where fanged creatures lurched around decaying mansions or erupted from under the ground to terrorise the ‘undead’. But then Stephen King came along and brought the terror to our own doorsteps. He came to Everytown, Anywhere, USA.
It Follows makes King look like Alice in Wonderland. A film that reminds one of The Sixth Sense in many ways – who can forget Haley Joel Osment’s “I see dead people!” – its susurrating mood and screeching soundtrack make it riveting. It’s also, it should be noted, strictly adult on a number of levels and viewers will find much of it unsavoury, if not stomach-churning.
The plot deals with a condition people experience after sexual contact, which makes them see frightening visions. Are these of ghosts? Of dead people? Can they be destroyed? The film only answers such questions fitfully as it wishes. It’s best to just watch it and admire its sense of atmosphere. (Some of you may prefer to do this with your hands over your eyes.)
David Robert Mitchel, in the director’s chair, creates tableaus of climax and anti-climax, scare and counter-scare. We follow the teenage central character Jay (Maika Monroe) through her travails after she picks up the condition (is it meant to be a metaphorical form of Aids?) from a boyfriend. He turns out to be the date from Hell.
The only way to escape it is to pass it on to someone else. She’s slow to do this. Instead, as seems to be mandatory for all horror films, she repeatedly goes into the jaws of danger. This ramps up the shock value of the film, if not its credibility.
In between the shocks there are many reasons to keep watching It Follows.
Mitchel has a great eye for detail. When he shows us Jay doing things like putting blades of grass on her thigh, or trailing her hand in the water, the gentleness of such behaviour contrasts markedly with the chill factor elsewhere. Water figures strongly in the film, especially in a powerful penultimate scene in a swimming pool.
An actress who looks like a cross between Alicia Silverstone and Reese Witherspoon, Monroe is one to watch for the future but the film itself is a mystery on many levels. Where are Jay’s parents, for one thing – we never see them?
And why has a movie that’s set in the present got black and white televisions showing old movies? And a cinema with an organ in it?
If it doesn’t answer all the questions it raises, that doesn’t mean you won’t be gripped to your seat from the first moments. By the last ones you may well be under it.