It Follows (2014)

I had to drive 160 miles, round-trip, to catch It Follows (2014) on the big screen. And what It all boils down to, Fellow Programs, is David Robert Mitchell's loving tribute to John Carpenter (-- especially the industrial synthesizer soundtrack), cinematographer Dean Cundey, and a vintage STD hygiene film -- Easy to Get (1947), Venereal Disease: The Love Bug (1979) -- with a preternatural twist.

Moody and highly atmospheric, I'll give them that, but It Follows kinda forgot to be scary. And yet ... it didn't really need to be. At least the kind of scary you're thinking of. No. This film was aiming for something a little higher than that. Dread. Both existential and practical.

As usual, this new breed of trailer we’ve been plagued with lately already gave away the plot, but, to sum up, basically, a malignant sexually transmitted disease takes on the form of a supernatural chameleon that is out to get everyone who spreads it around. And when I say ‘get’ I mean turn these carriers into a bloody human pretzel.

And the only way to stay ahead of this thing, is to either spread it around more and keep as many people in the chain between you and certain death or accept the inevitable, and let this malfeasance run its course until it finally reaches patient zero.

The film starts with the latest casualty, Jay (Monroe), who has sex with some jerk that went with Option A. He at least shows the courtesy to warn her about what is coming -- but not before tying her to a chair first. (And who says chivalry is dead?) For there are certain rules this thing must follow because of … reasons.

One, there is no apparent cure for this infection; two, you can't reason with it; three, while you can run and try to hide, which may even work for a while and buy you some time, it will only keep on coming; four, it can look like anyone; five, it only kills in reverse order, meaning it targets the most recently infected first and works its way back through the chain like a murderous self-destruct sequence; and lastly, if it does catch you, you’re dead.

Thus, all you can do to keep from dying is to try and stay ahead of it or ‘spread’ the curse even further, and hope whoever you infect spreads it around even more, exponentially, or gives it a good run, to give yourself a respite and some breathing room.

Wow. That’s a lot of rules, but Mitchell, who also wrote the screenplay, lays them out cleverly and without the usual convenient plot dump.

From there, a knot of friends do their best to help Jay delay the inevitable by staying one step ahead of the deadly entity that only those who are infected can see (-- oh yeah, forgot to mention that one. My bad). This also leaves Jay’s moral dilemma on whether to spread it around more, keep running forever, or just surrender to the inevitable without anyone else getting hurt or killed.

What I liked most about this film was Maika Monroe. She is a star in the making and I look forward to following her career from here. What I also liked was how we're not really sure when all of this was happening -- with the vintage clothes and furnishings, a mix of new and older cars, no cell phones (-- except for the first victim), and that funky kindle, it’s like we're devolving -- or slouching back to the 1980s.

Urban decay is also a huge motif for It Follows -- the city is already dead, the rest is witheringly on its way out, leaving a demilitarized husk for our characters to wander through.

And the film that plays out in these surroundings is very deliberate, patient, and requires you to pay attention, ratcheting the tension up several notches if you, like the protagonist, keep your eyes open. (That set-up for the attack on the beach was just amazing.)

Sure, as it progresses, the film raises more questions than offering any answers -- though I found the lack of finding a convenient 'expert' to explain it all away and how to stop the entity kinda refreshing. The nominal hero has seen one too many 1950s-era Creature Features and just wings it from there. Event the title is a bit of a nod to things like It Conquered the World (1956) and IT! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958).

A couple of twists and turns are kind of ambiguous as to what really happened and how far our heroine would go, and went, in the interest of self-preservation and putting other people in jeopardy, making It Follows kinda frustrating in spots before it ends -- and ends rather abruptly.

But! Having an 80-mile drive home to stew on what I just watched, piecing together what happened, and what Mitchell probably intended with that ending, (eventually) put this one solidly in the win column for me.

To say exactly why would spoil too much -- and this one earned its secrets for you all to find out for yourselves. Yeah. I liked this one enough initially -- but It Follows keeps getting better and better the more I think about it.

Originally posted on June 4, 2015, at Micro-Brewed Reviews. It Follows (2014) 

Northern Lights Films :: Animal Kingdom :: Two Flints :: RADiUS-TWC / EP: Joshua Astrachan, Mia Chang, P. Jennifer Dana, Frederick W. Green, Corey Large, Alan Pao, Jeff Schlossman, Bill Wallwork / P: Rebecca Green, Laura D. Smith Ireland, David Kaplan, David Robert Mitchell, Erik Rommesmo, Jeff Schlossman / CP: Robyn K. Bennett / D: David Robert Mitchell / W: David Robert Mitchell / C: Mike Gioulakis / E: Julio C. Perez IV / M: Disasterpeace / S: Maika Monroe, Lili Sepe, Olivia Luccardi, Keir Gilchrist