The horror genre has been pretty moribund of late, stuck firstly in the gruesome but not-scary rota of torture porn movies, and then the increasingly tedious and ineffective Paranormal Activity series, and its copycat versions. But with last year’s very well received The Babadook, and now It Follows, things seem to be looking up.
Maika Monroe stars as Jay, a 19 year old in Detroit who has just started a new relationship with a guy a couple of years older than her. After having sex with him for the first time, he warns her that he has ‘passed on’ something which had previously been passed onto him. As a result, she will start to see people following her / walking towards her who will kill her if they get hold of her. Those people can manifest themselves in any human form, and can only walk slowly but are pretty indestructible. She can shed the curse by sleeping with someone else, but if that person is killed, it will back on her.
The plot does sound ludicrous and it is best not to look too hard for the holes in it. A fairly obvious take on the perils of teenage sex and sexual diseases, I found it easy enough to be caught up in the tension generated by the promising director, David Robert Mitchell. Owing a massive debt to late 70s / early 80s John Carpenter – the characters and setting are very reminiscent of Halloween and the synth score could have been composed by the horror maestro himself! With the additional of some interesting technical flourishes, tension is created a couple of times by a slowly panning camera. Mitchell creates some genuine scares, with a general unsettling feeling pervading proceedings throughout.
The film does have flaws – a sequence in a swimming baths is not very well thought through or realised – would it really have so many electrical sockets so near the pool? It does break its own rules a couple of times, including a follower standing naked on a roof for no reason! Having said that this is a really creepy film with a pleasing open ending.
Rating: 7 out of 10