It Follows

Jay (Maika Monroe) is a young woman living in Detroit. Following a sexual encounter one night with Hugh (Jake Weary), Jay is drugged and bound. When she wakes up, Hugh explains to her that because she had sex with him, a curse he had passes on to her, and a mysterious entity no one else can see will follow her. The entity can appear in the guise of any person, including people Jay knows, and it will follow her everywhere she goes until it kills her or she passes the curse on.

Going into It Follows, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, I thought I knew how it would play out. Knowing it was about a curse that passes through sex, I envisioned body horror in the tradition of David Cronenberg, graphic imagery and sexuality as the curse passes from person to person, an orgy of blood and depravity.

Instead, It Follows is a much more unconventional thriller, built more on paranoia and unease than on shock effects.

People expecting an explanation or back story for It Follows are going to be disappointed. What It really is - a witch, a demon, a ghost, - is never revealed, and no explanation is offered for why it does what it does. It just is. Sometimes it appears as an old woman, sometimes as a seven-foot-tall man, and sometimes it appears as a friend or family member of Jay's. 

Most intriguingly, it never seems to be in a hurry, content to approach with a steady walk from a distance at any time, whether Jay's sitting in a classroom or at home on the couch. Slow but steady.

There are a number of logical questions surrounding this being the movie could have been paralyzed by trying to answer: what constitutes a sexual encounter, does oral sex count, what about rape, etc. Early on during Jay's ordeal, there's some hint she might be traumatized and hallucinating (the way Hugh drops her off in front of her house resembles the aftermath of a date rape), but fairly soon, Jay's friends, though they can't see it, see the effects of it, like it pulling Jay's hair or smashing a door. This raises the question of whether it can be contained or captured.

But ultimately, those questions aren't important. It Follows has the logic of a nightmare. No matter where she goes, no matter who's she with, no matter where she hides, Jay will be hounded by this thing for the rest of her life by it; it moves slowly, but it never seems to have any trouble catching up to her. The monster will not be deterred; it's just going to keep coming until you are dead. 

You might find a safe place for now, but for how long? How will you know when it's not safe? Jay can and does sleep with someone else to pass the curse along, but even passing it along is no guarantee because how can she know when it kills her partner and is again following her? That person walking toward her in the distance: is that a stranger going about their day or the monster that's trying to kill you? That's what make It Follows unnerving; even during the slower, quieter parts, you're on your toes.

The comparison to a Cronenberg movie is not unfounded. Like in the early films by the noted Canadian filmmaker, this entity could be interpreted as a metaphor for venereal disease. After all, the curse passes through sexual intercourse, and once you get it, it's with you for life. Imagine if instead a curse, Hugh gave Jay HIV; that's something she'd also have to carry for the rest of her life. One moment, one youthful indiscretion - having sex with someone she really doesn't know - and she's haunted forever.

We can also expand out the story's thematic point. Jay's problem is an individual issue, something she has to deal with, but if we take a step back, a similar sense of hopelessness and despair overhangs her group of friends, without a supernatural threat. They live in a Detroit that is economically devastated, dilapidated by abandoned houses, and these kids have next to no adult supervision or support. What future did Jay have anyway? The adults have long abandoned the next generation, leaving them to fend for themselves in a world depleted of resources and opportunity.

It Follows is relatively restrained in terms of graphic imagery. The sex the characters engage in is not explicit. While there is full-frontal nudity, it's by incarnations of It, both male and female, and it is shocking and frightening rather than titillating. Even the violence is low-key. While we see the first victim's horribly mutilated corpse early on, we don't see the murder itself, but the implication is quite horrific. 

Helping immensely is the music by Disasterpeace. Like the movie, it's unconventional. It doesn't rely on musical cues to get you to jump. Parts are relatively simple (piano melody), but it's mixed with clashing sound effects and droning atmospheric audio, almost like if Pink Floyd conducted the score for Halloween.

Mitchell's direction is first rate. He gives us crisp camera movement, eerie long shots of it approaching from afar, claustrophobic angles indoors, and good use of shadows, particularly in the parking garage when it first approaches Jay.