What are you afraid of? Economic hardship, alienation, feelings of guilt because of sexual promiscuity? Most horror movies are just retreads of The Exorcist or Halloween with jumpy editing and loud violin screeches. The great ones take these conventions and morph them into something unique and personal; they tell us about our own fears.
Directed by David Robert Mitchell (The Myth of the American Sleepover), It Follows combines the storyline of a coming-of-age movie with a spooky story where the antagonist is an invisible force continually creeping out the characters. The suburban streets, swimming pools and condemned buildings are this movie’s haunted houses. This movie exists within its own timeless mythology as different elements from the scenery reflect different periods. It’s timeless because the fears are universal.
The central image of a classic car parked in the unmaintained parking lot of an abandoned building as a blonde teenage girl has sex inside is a send-up of ‘80s slasher flicks. Anyone who has seen those kinds of movies knows it’s all downhill from there. For example, after the opening scene of Friday the 13th where two teenagers leave a campfire to have illicit coitus, the campers are murdered one by one.
Similarly, John Carpenter’s Halloween follows a murderer as he kills teenagers in 1970s American suburbia who partake in sexual promiscuity and substance abuse.
In It Follows, the blonde teen, Jay, resides in a dark suburban neighbourhood with empty streets. She’s a loner with no serious friendships. We know her more through surroundings than through any dialogue.
Jay is plagued with visions of people who ominously follow her. Her troubles are a result of sex with a virtual stranger, who passes on this malaise that she can conquer only by having sex with someone else. The remainder of the film is essentially Jay being frightened by this elusive force while a group of teens lounge around deciphering Jay’s condition.
The film is also about a self-reflexive attempt to rejuvenate the trite formula of horror movies by finding heart in the character archetypes. Characters are seen watching black and white horror movies. Other allusions include an ‘80s-style synth score, a pool scene reminiscent of Let The Right One In, and an invisible force that comes to punish teenage debauchery.
Unfortunately, the film isn’t very scary in a typical sense. A scary movie that doesn’t scare is like a car that doesn’t move. We are given little information about the characters and little reason to empathize with them, so it is hard to care for them and be scared with them.
That being said, the more I think about It Follows, and the more I appreciate the way it morphs genre conventions to examine a longing for intimacy in a fallen world, the more I feel the poignancy that I may have missed on first viewing. The slow pace that was initially boring and the detached camerawork that seemed self-indulgent is, in hindsight, hypnotic and touching.
The titular “It” is the same force that seems to be in every formulaic slasher flick. But more importantly, “It” is the embodiment of teenage fears, such as alienation and intimacy. A scary guy popping out of a dark corner with a knife who slashes someone’s throat is not scary; we’ve become desensitized. What’s scary is a film that brings to the surface all the fears that we hold deep inside, the ones that continue to follow us.
