Movie Review: It Follows

Run, don't walk, to the scariest film in a long while.

Each year sees a new contender for the horror throne emerge. They’re not always deserving. For that you can thank the terror aficionados who scramble to name John Carpenter’s presumptive heir - fated to restore the genre to its former glory! - and just settle on whoever made the newest, goriest viral video.

Lately though, the candidates have been inspiring. In 2014, it was Jennifer Kent, director of brilliant Australian fright-fest The Babadook. (Author Stephen King and The Exorcist’s William Friedkin gave her their blessing, which, in Game of Thrones terms, is akin to Mance Rayder and Stannis Baratheon bowing down to Khaleesi.)

In 2015, it’s David Robert Mitchell, who is very much the sensitive ‘Jon Snow’ of the indie filmmaking world.

This canonisation comes off the back of his Detroit-filmed creeper It Follows, in which the villain is an unseen menace that takes the form of familiar persons and simply walks towards its victims.

That ceaseless slow march will likely become 2015’s scariest image.

Maika Monroe plays Jay, a uni student who falls for and then sleeps with new-kid-in-town Jeff (Jake Weary), only to wind up carrying a nasty souvenir.

Having been chloroformed after their encounter – itself, a harrowing sequence – she awakens tied to a wheelchair in an abandoned, decrepit building. (The ruined Michigan landscape has no shortage of these sets.)

Jeff informs her that she’s now going to be followed by … something; something that will look like a human, maybe even one she knows and loves, and stalk her without ever stopping. We witness in the opening scene what happens when ‘It’ catches up to its prey. You don’t want it happening to you.

Jeff apologises for infecting Jay, stressing he had no choice, and letting her know there is a way to halt the entity in its tracks (or, at least, divert it): sleep with someone else. The curse gets passed along, and hopefully far enough along that it never winds up back with you.

Revealing influences as unconventional as Carpenter’s Halloween 2 (the much maligned yet secretly awesome sequel that follows Michael Myers as he haunts his sister Laurie), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and the Jennifer Jason Leigh subplot from Fast Times At Ridgmont High, It Follows feels different to the other horror titles making the rounds today. The good kind of different.

The mesmerising score by Disasterpeace – aka Rich Vreeland – opens the picture with pulsing synth before bursting like an industrial alarm-clock. Throughout the film, Goblin, Angelo Badalamenti and Trent Reznor all get a sonic shout-out. A thriller in 2015 can’t not be compared to what came before. At least David Robert Mitchell, as a compiler of moods and atmospheres, has great, terrifying taste.

Mitchell also knows that the finest scary movies aren’t merely literal either, and his waking nightmare has plenty of real-life horrors hiding just beneath the surface. From the sight of a scantily-clad Jay being dumped on her front-lawn after Jeff’s violation, to instances where the 'It' appears as a parent before pouncing, It Follows morphs the imagery of at-home abuse with the supernaturally sinister (yes, just as Twin Peaks did).

There’s a profoundly sad coming-of-age tale in here too, as in his first feature, The Myth of the American Sleepover. That was a deeply felt and yearning tale of unrequited love and social exclusion set over the course of one evening and multiple slumber parties. It has more in common with It Follows than their individual loglines would suggest. (Before I realised they shared a director, I was surprised by how much It Followed felt like a far spookier version of Sleepover.)

Jay, played beautifully by Monroe, is unfairly punished for her misplaced trust in Jeff. She goes on the run with four friends, two of them guys (Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto) who are open to, ahem, sharing her burden; you know, for safety’s sake. The reality of that transaction, however, is far less scintillating and emptier than the lusty boys anticipate. Jay, meanwhile, keeps giving up pieces of herself, not actually getting any closer to feeling whole again.

It Follows could have been a nefarious, teenage-guilting exercise masked as freaky Friday night entertainment. It’s way more empathetic than that. It doesn’t relish the violence against its stars. Instead, the savvy director’s constant screw-tightening tension – as well as cinematographer Mike Gioulakis’ dreamy, unblinking camerawork - keeps us glued to the screen, letting the real tragedy of Jay’s entrée into adulthood unfold before us.

Horror movies have never been kind to their promiscuous characters. Neither is It Follows, though at least the filmmaker here is on the teens’ side.

4/5

In cinemas now. Rated MA15+ for strong supernatural themes, violence and sex scenes.