Film Review: It Follows
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I have tried to craft an interesting opening paragraph for this review of It Follows for a long time. I’ve gone through about 10 opening sentences and around 5 combinations of commentary afterwards. My brain is as scrambled trying to figure out how to write about this movie as it was trying to keep up with the film itself. The only real thing I can attempt to formulate about It Follows is that while it provides much to discuss after seeing it, most of that conversation will be centered around anger at the film’s lack of conviction, missed opportunities and over the top antics that ruin an interesting premise.
It Follows suffers from the weight of what it’s attempting, rather unsuccessfully to do. After discussing the film with a few people post-screening the terms self reflexive and “knows what its doing” were thrown about and on the surface one could see why. Like many horror films that resonate, the film uses real world problems to ground the tale. If its one thing I can compliment the movie on its that the notion of being haunted by things that are passed on sexually is an incredible starting point and the first act of It Follows is a wonderful exercise in filmmaking (that opening sequence!) and world building. However, once the film moves past introducing you to the world it falls apart under the wieght of itself. It Follows feels like a movie that struggling to be so many things at once and it doesn’t really achieve them.
It’s one thing to be self reflexive and ridiculous or to attempt to critique horror films. We’ve had films such as Scream or even so recently as Cabin in the Woods, which took the horror film tropes and subject matter, skewered them, and mashed them up all while themselves being excellent horror films. It Follows tries, and I mean capital T tries, to be some allegory but then not and it tries to be some 80s pastiche but not and it tries to be a good movie but its not. This helter skelter approach to the material really did not jive with me.
In particular because the shallowness or arrogance of writer/director David Mitchell’s approach to the story doesn’t allow him to keep the tension that this movie so desperately begs for. I will get into more in the spoiler section below but Mitchell attempts everything in his power to raise the tension and stakes and yet every time he puts together a decent sequence, the movie immediately lets the air out. One of the main ways this happens is with the cinematography and shot choice. After the delightful opening long take, the movie seeks to revel in the style, forcing many of the shots to feel unmotivated and making the audience overtly aware of the camera, which is not something you need to do. The movie also tries to use the visuals as a short hand (shots of framed pictures play a role) but as an audience we don’t care nearly enough or have any real reference to what these people in the visuals mean.
Combing with this show off-ness was a script that didn’t maintain the stakes well enough. Sure it presented the main character with a strong challenge and moral dilemma but didn’t present the audience with enough knowledge to believe the measures they took in the film’s climactic act and renders the characters surrounding the main girl so dumb and inept. Only Jay and Greg manage to escape the foolish script. I’ve gone as far as I can without talking about my specific qualms in the film.
Spoiler Section
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
Much of the ire I have towards the film is with how it treats how these hauntings work. After she is kidnapped by her former boyfriend Jeff, Jay is shown the monster, which has taken the form of her boyfriend’s mother. It is during this scene that Jay gives an exposition dump about how Jay shouldn’t be in a room without 2 exits and that the monster moves slow so she’ll be able to out run it. When this line was uttered, I heard a record scratch. Did Mitchell really just inform the audience that our characters would be able to escape these things with ease because THEY WALK SLOW?! Talk about undercutting the power of your villains in one line. While the movie does do some interesting things with the monsters (a beach sequence in the latter half of the film stands out in particular) but I never felt particularly scared or worried for the characters.
Speaking of Jeff, that characterization and how the movie employs him is so extremely problematic. When Jay is forced to go back and confront him, the movie does absolutely nothing with it. How do you have these characters back in orbit, at Jeff’s mom’s house no less and not have her friends inform him about how awful of a person he is or have her tell his mother that her son basically treated her like trash. Also problematic, was how adamant Paul was at wanting in Jay’s pants despite her “disease.” This is supposed to be a tale about STDs and this dude wants to bang her even knowing what she has could kill?
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