The following review contains mild spoilers.
I’ve been known to make the, “What’s so scary about a creature you can outrun?” crack about zombies from time to time.
After seeing
It Follows, I will never make such an ill-informed remark again.
The demonic force in
It Follows is not a zombie, but it’s zombie-esque, in that it can only walk. It’s like a zombie stripped of all zombie signifiers (pale skin, ravaged flesh), which actually makes it creepier. It can look like anyone, usually someone you know well, but not always. And it just walks—slowly, purposefully. Oh yeah—it’s purpose is to kill you.
It Follows, which is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, creates a wonderful atmosphere of paranoia, where every walking figure poses an ominous threat. But there’s a catch. Only you—and the other unlucky souls being followed (assuming they’re still alive)—can see the walkers.
“Do you see that?” our heroine Jay (Maika Monroe) will tremulously ask, as a lone figure walks toward her.
“Yeah,” her friends will say with a shrug. And we in the audience will get to laugh and exhale—briefly, at least.
Jay became one of the followed after she had sex with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary), the new guy in town. (This isn’t your classic horror film “sex! bad!” moralizing. Sex in this film is pretty matter of fact. If anything, the film is an ironic sendup of that kind of horror trope.) Hugh is a bad guy, but not the
worst. He explains to Jay that now she must have sex with someone else, to pass the demonic haunting along.
But is Jay too good a person to do something like that? At one point, she stares longingly at a bunch of dudebros on a boat. (I won’t tell you what happens next.)
One of the many things I loved about
It Follows is that Jay behaves in a believable way. First of all, she’s freaked out, almost to the point of catatonia. Secondly, she tells her sister and her friends, who don’t really believe her (at first), but loyally stick close, just in case. Particularly eager is young Paul (Keir Gilchrist), who’s been crushing on Jay for years. This is his chance to play hero. At one point he “valiantly” offers to sleep with her so that the demon will pass on to him.
It Follows uses grainy film and a kind of fuzzy synth-noise soundtrack to create a ’70s horror film vibe. It’s funny and smart about young people and honestly so much scarier than a film about walking has any right to be.