After The Guest and Cub, I think I may be ready to never see another 70s/80s horror or thriller throwback film ever. No more synth scores, no more story-free villains, no more films that amount to empty homage. Between Cub’s complete lack of tension and story context, and The Guest’s cartoonish characterizations, it’s just about time to put a moratorium on this kind of subgenre that has popped up recently. At the very least, we should demand that the films that spawn from this recent trend be as visually distinct and sonically evocative as It Follows, lest we continue to drown in a sea of vapid copycats.
The premise is a bit murky, to say the least. After innocent sexual encounters, young men and women seem to be stalked by an unseen force, hellbent on killing them, unless they pass on the curse through intercourse again. It’s an almost admirably blunt STD metaphor, brandishing its allegorical leanings like a sledgehammer. Thankfully, the film’s stylistic choices are more than capable of hiding the thin script’s weaknesses. Opening with a lengthy tracking shot that follows a young woman running from something, the film establishes a very unique sensibility on how to go about telling its story, opting to put us into the victims’ state of mind as they flee from their relentless enemy. This trend repeats throughout the film, effectively creating a sense of being trapped within the terror, particularly in one shot as our protagonist is whipped around on a wheelchair she is tied to, with the camera completely fixed on her position.
The film also delivers on the score front, opting for the kind of throwback synth score I mentioned above, but somehow making it feel fresh and atmospheric in all the right ways where the aforementioned other films failed. This is a film completely dedicated to building a mood and tension, and the sound design doesn’t disappoint in that department. Often opting for minimal dialogue and hushed, soft conversations instead of loud, forced exposition dumps and characters yelling and screaming at one another. It’s a refreshing change of pace that allows the film to feel familiar and wholly unique all at once.
The storytelling itself is a bit thin, almost entirely abandoning its more clever allegorical inclinations at times. While it certainly delivers on the tension and scares, it feels like a film with a half-baked idea that it only deals with in the abstract. The more frustrating elements come from a lack of real exploration into the rules of this unstoppable force, and how to contextualize those rules within the STD allegory. It’s all the more frustrating because the technical prowess of the film is so good that it makes the flat narrative stick out like a sore thumb. The two dimensional characterizations would sting even more were it not for the refreshing notion to make the ensemble consist of characters who are more or less pretty darn intelligent, rather than a bunch of screaming idiots.
Honestly, if more horror films were like It Follows, we’d be in a pretty solid place. What it lacks in depth it more than makes up in sheer confidence of form, creating an unsettling and tense experience that is as much fun as it is stressful.
