Film Review: ‘It Follows’

  

“People don’t change. Times, they do…The lying to yourself that the past held no sway over the future. But in the end…This life follows you.” — John Wick

The It in It Follows is so much more than what it first appears to be. In fact, for nearly 99% of the film what It is is what we pick up from the trailer– a physical metaphor and monstrous symbol for STDs. The final reveal of It in the last couple of minutes shouldn’t be as shocking as it is given the genre the movie is in, but it’s how it comes across and the build up to it that makes the revelation the ultimate terror. The clues are almost setup esoterically early on but never does the desire to figure it out drive the film. The need to survive is the only motivation, thus It is the ultimate villain. 

Jay (Maika Moore) is like any millenial student, disenfranchized with her mother and the dilapidated city she lives in. She seeks an identity and escapes by dating Hugh (Jack Weary), which ultimately means she’ll find herself by sleeping with him. But there’s a consequence to the act of coitus. Hugh has contracted It, an otherworldly menace that stalks its prey by taking the form of others who have contracted it. Visible only to those who are infected by It, the invisible monster is rentless and strikes whenever it feels like it.

It Follows is a great film, that’s all one really needs to know going into it. It tackles internal nightmares of a few and creates in them a collective space of agony. In the likes of all postmodern masterpieces, It Follows takes its formal image from similarly horror themed flicks like Halloween, The Thing, A Nightmare On Elm Street, and The Shining. And not since The Shining has a film been as retroactively introspective about what it is and what it wants to convey. The Shining‘s mystery is the maze of the The Shining, the film’s images and visuals. But perhaps Halloween is mimicked more by It Follows. Halloween was about a Laurie’s sexual frustration, and pent up libido, and ended up penetrating the universal male-visage who had been penetrating every other chick in the film, except for her. And certainly It Follows is about sexual exploration and the price of being promiscuous in the age of, well, exploration.

  

Jay’s admirer, long-time friend, Paul (Keir Gilchrist), is like Ducky in Pretty In Pink, another film where an out-of-sorts girl wants to lose her virginity to the cool guy. Paul is willing to put his life on the line and sleep with Jay and this illicities laughs. Firstly because like any horny teen, losing one’s virginity is a symbol of status. And it also means his hormones have been momentarily sated. Secondly, it’s an honest communication of loyatlty because Paul does want to help. Only those who have slept with someone who has It can get It and see It. The film cleverly hides the larger meaning of It within It, and this relects on those who get what the film is about. 

Director David Robert Mitchell references Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot pretty early in the film.  At one point it seemed like Mitchell wouldn’t payoff this bizarre introduction (as if any teen has The Idiot on his or her e-reader). It’s to Mitchell’s expert literary foreshadowing that the film comes ’round to why he put it in the film. To discuss that point would be to spoil the end, and this is one creature-feature that has to be taken in as virginally and mentally virtuous as possible. I dare not take your innocence at this time. 

  

But the film isn’t just focused on the nature of sex and its consequences, but about the general decay of the nuclear family and it’s once stable home. Think of the alcoholic mother in A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s her actions and the actions of the rest of the parents that causes their children to suffer. There are dozens of times the film shows Detroit in rumble. Even Jay’s friend, Yara (Olivia Luccardi), comments about how as a child she wasn’t allowed to go past 8 Mile because she would venutre into the ghetto. It’s weird how close tragedy is around, Mitchell infers, and how at any moment life can come crashing down and it can all disappear. Parents try so hard to keep their children safe by moving them into suburbia, but despite their best intentions it’s their hubris. Decay is inevitable.

Something or Nothing:

Something that horrifyingly supervenes. It Follows is pastiche in the hopes of survival. It’s a film that beckons and calls to the past to come back to its roots and revive the horror genre. It’s similar to how A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night reimagined the gothic and macabre by retracing the classic style of stark contrasts with high lights. It Follows is one best films of 2015 and will live on long after time has taken those who created it. So pass the story along to the next person, or as much is humanly possible.