Indie films once again prove the power of creativity and ingenuity with David Robert Mitchell's "It Follows." Where other stalker movies relied on urban legend and one very menacing and very real threat (Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger comes to mind), "It Follows" keeps you guessing until the very end. Read this "It Follows" review to find out how something you don't know could kill you.
Like most movies of its genre, the theme of "It Follows" presents strong sexual overtones - in this case, the consequences of sleeping with a stranger. 19-year old Jay (Maika Monroe) does it with Hugh (Jake Weary) at the back seat of his car, and her date drugs her with chloroform. She wakes up bound and gagged in the middle of nowhere.
To her horror, Hugh explains that he has transferred 'it' to her, a curse wherein a strange, shapeshifting figure follows her everywhere and tries to kill her. He then inevitably proves it as the first 'follower', lumbers into the scene towards Jay.
"Don't let it touch you," says Hugh, and advises Jay instead to pass it on, as he did himself. While this may seem grim in itself, Hugh explains that he does not want Jay killed, because the death of the person you passed the curse onto only makes it reverberate back to you.
"It Follows" may have a lot of the elements of your run-off-the-mill psycho horror film, but Mitchell's fresh new take on tension, paranoia, and creative videography is definitely one for the books. He uses lighting changes, wide shots, and slow zooms effectively to capture the mood. This is a nice escape from horror movies that have become too reliant on jump scares and loud sounds.
The movie doesn't focus on morality, but rather on the psychological. "It Follows" 'follows' Jay as she spirals into a deep, psychological trauma that comes from feeling dread every single day. It is also practically bloodless.
If you're looking for a new way to enjoy horror movies, "It Follows" is definitely the flick for you. Gone are the macho serial killers, replaced instead by a horror that's truly inescapable: a specter of the mind.
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