By I saw It Follows sort of on a whim. I went to two press screenings that day, because it was mostly a day off for me, and I’d heard good things. I figured, why the heck not? Worst case scenario: I have nightmares forever and rue the day. Best case scenario: I get to go home and write a glowing review of a film that transcends genre to become a modern classic.
Two days later, I saw it again. Another email blast went around from the film’s PR, and I couldn’t say no. I had to see it again. I had to. I’ve seen dozens (hundreds) of films for review, but I’ve never gone to multiple screenings of a film before, not just because I wanted to experience it again. Until this one.
It Follows is the first truly great film of 2015. This is the best case scenario.
It Follows
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Release Date: March 13, 2015
Rating: R
A black screen. Music builds, slowly at first, but then faster and faster until the film actually begins. And as it builds, there are only two possible options:
- Something crazy is about to happen.
- Absolutely nothing is about to happen.
Number 2 is a trick, but it’s a common one. The build up becomes total silence on a serene moment. It Follows is Number 2, and the music breaks into an image of a quiet suburb. But quiet suburbs don’t stay quiet for long. Suddenly, the music swells again, and a teenage girl runs screaming from her house. The camera follows her, refusing to cut as she stops near enough for a neighbor to ask what’s up. She brushes it off, and then runs back into the house, and the camera moves down its track with her. Moments later, she bursts out again, this time with keys, jumps in a car, and drives off. Only then does it cut to the girl, now on the beach, lit by her headlights. She pulls out a cell phone and calls her dad. She says she loves him.
Then she is dead.
Watching all of this, you begin to make assumptions. Thinking back on all of those slasher movies you’ve seen, you begin to wonder: Was the camera the monster? Was that spectacular opening shot something POV? When you see that long camera zoom in on the protagonist soon afterwards, that’s the killer selecting its prey, right? The camera must be a representation of the titular “It.”
Nope.
You see, It Follows‘s trick runs much deeper than that. This is a teenage drama that tricks you into thinking it’s horror. It is horror, of course, but it’s not about horror. (Except in a kind of meta sense.) It’s about a teenage girl, Jay, who has sex with a boy she really likes and is punished for it. But not some puritanical torture porn punishment: She’s instead possessed by a shapeshifting thing that follows her. After “infecting” her, he explains everything to her, hoping she’ll understand. The rules are simple: It follows you. Always. And if it touches you, it will kill you. But it doesn’t run. It can’t float through walls. It has to break windows and knocks on doors. It’s a physical entity, albeit invisible to those who haven’t been infected. If you’re careful, you’ll always know it’s coming. But it’s always coming, until you pass it on to someone else by having sex with them. But if that person dies, then it comes after you again. You’re never truly safe.
It only occurred to me when discussing the film with our very own Hubert Vigilla, who reviewed the film for some other, less cool publication, that this sequence is the kind of expository monologues that people (myself included) so often rail against. Expository dialogue is terrible, except when it isn’t, and what happens here exemplifies the brilliance that underlies It Follows. It’s a monologue given in fear, by a young man pacing the perimeter of a dilapidated building. Jay is tied to a wheelchair. She is also afraid. He doesn’t want to hurt her, and he doesn’t want her to be hurt, but it’s selfish. He’s telling her this for his benefit, not hers.
It makes the moment real.
It Follows is made of real moments like these. For the most part, these characters act like people might in a situation like this. Reactions make sense. Sometimes the characters are stupid, but that stupidity comes from an honest, if unfortunate place. And sometimes the characters have to do terrible things. Jay has to doom someone else in order to save herself, and hope that that person dooms someone else, over and over again. And you can see the toll it takes on her and the people around her.
But even if it’s real, it’s not always realistic. Writer/director David Robert Mitchell created a dreamscape world, and (like a dream) it doesn’t always follow the rules. Both It Follows and Mitchell’s first film, Myth of the American Sleepover, are “timeless” films, in the sense that trying to place them in time is nearly impossible, but there’s a key different. Myth of the American Sleepover felt more like a period piece. It felt like it was a time, but you couldn’t tell which. It Follows has no time. The Characters watch 50s sci-fi B movies on CRT televisions and talk on wired telephones. There are no computers, but one character has a clamshell phone(?) that is primarily used as an e-reader. One character looks at (terrifying) copies of Hustler that probably date back to the 70s or 80s. It’s consistently inconsistent, and it makes the world fascinating.
That isn’t to say this alternate world doesn’t have its problems. The monster in particular is deceptively complicated. Not because the rules are, but because it doesn’t play out as simply as Jay is led to expect. The best example is actually shown directly in the trailer. Jay looks out a car window and sees It (in the form of a naked man) up on a nearby rooftop, staring down at her. It’s a cool shot, right? Yeah, but it makes no goddamn sense. First up: it’s not walking. It’s just standing. And that’s weird in and of itself. But try thinking about the logistics of it: This is a creature that must physically break windows and climb in if a door is locked. It can probably climb, but what it does it does in service of reaching its prey. There are no circumstances under which climbing onto the roof of a house (where your target will never be) makes sense.
But it’s a cool shot.
And you have to accept that the rules don’t always make sense, and that the world is similar to but not quite the same as the one we live in, to really click with the film. If you get bogged down in moments like that, the things that don’t really make sense, you’ll be pulled out of the experience. And that’s a shame, because the monster kind of doesn’t matter. And that’s It Follows‘s true brilliance. This isn’t a really film about a thing that is stalking sexually promiscuous teenagers (though it is also that); it’s a film about oridinary people being put in extraordinary situations and learning to cope with it. It’s about all sort of big concepts like life and death and love and friendship. But the only thing that’s ever in your face is the beautiful, brilliant score by Disasterpeace. The film itself is surprisingly subtle, and it’s most effective in the moments when two characters just talk to each other. The dialogue, like the characters, feels real. These sound like real conversations a couple of teenagers might be having, regardless of their situation.
And that is what makes It Follows special, its ability to blend tense horror with believable drama in a way that few films have even tried, let alone pulled off. And it makes that obscenely difficult task look easy. Bravo, Mr. Mitchell. Bravo.
Per Morten Mjolkeraaen: I too, like Hubert, reviewed It Follows for some other, less cool publication. Living in Norway, I was lucky enough to see the movie at last year’s Bergen International Film Festival in September. I liked it so much that I actually saw it twice within a week, where I saw a combined thirty-four movies. That, and the fact that Alec saw it twice pre-review, says it all.
Seeing as Alec is way more literate than me, I’ll keep this short. The opening scene, which he so marvelously puts into words above, sets the mood immediately. The camera’s movements is important in It Follows. It’s sophisticated and patient, and always beautiful. Whether it’s a close-up of Maika Monroe (whom many discovered in 2014s coolest movie, The Guest), or a long panning shot of the suburban neighborhoods. Every picture and frame is handled with care, but it transcends aesthetics, it becomes an extension of the narrative – a way to cement the inescapability of our characters.
Accompanying these images, is the score by Disasterpeace. While Alec says it’s the only aspect of the movie that’s “in our face”, I don’t think those words cover it. The music blares from the speakers, and without any hesitation, slams into your eardrums to beat away at your senses. It’s cathartic in its pure, unadulterated audaciousness.
Monroe is a millennial Janet Leigh. A bold statement, and one many people may disagree with, but nonetheless very true in my opinion. It Follows is an instant modern classic, and Monroe is fascinating to watch from beginning to end.
It’s been roughly six months since I saw It Follows, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a memory I can’t escape. Few movies leave such an impression on me, even fewer when you consider the circumstances of which I saw the movie, so again, It Follows is a instant modern classic. 89 — Exceptional