2 out of 5

Directed by: David Robert Mitchell

I’m sincerely confused at the hype over this one.

It Follows looks pretty good, with a generally well-effected slow moving, panning camera that ups the tension at moments, and has you scrabbling over the screen thinking to pluck out some scary detail, and I imagine there was appeal in how Mitchell took a very simple and relatable concept as the basis for his film, juxtaposed against the over-complicated mythologies and explanations that many a genre flick falls back on, but: when you do things simple and slow, it can also draw more attention to what doesn’t work.  And ultimately, a good idea that’s sorta hindered by not going anywhere gets knocked down to insulting by a few key oversights.

If you haven’t read anything about It Follows – I didn’t, prior to viewing – then for your sake I’ll avoid explaining the “It,” because that is one of the more rewardingly chilling parts of the flick.  However, there is an important spoiler to offer: that nothing is explained.  I know, sometimes this can be cool, but generally when the lack of explanation enhances the vibe in some way.  Which didn’t feel like the case here.  And interviews with Mitchell – where he tosses out a couple explanations of his own, and admits that the core “rule” the characters learn was really just a plotting convenience – supports my feeling.  It’s not explained because it’s not explained.  This is a short film worth of concept, needlessly dragged out to 110 minutes.  Those 110 minutes aren’t boring, but there is absolutely no character advancement to be made after about 30 minutes in, and the extra runtime, requiring something to fill it, is where some flubs are made.  But: let’s be forgiving, and say that Mitchell is just being coy, and the fan theories that you might read about interpreting the “meaning” of Follows have some basis.  Well… I still feel the same.  Reading into the setup from either a positive or negative perspective, any point that could be made still is not developed beyond what one sees / learns in those first 30 minutes.  In that sense, it reminds me of the pointless “did you get it?” feeling of Michael Haneke’s Cache (pointless because the film is meaningless without forcing the viewer to put pieces together, which isn’t an ideal film-going experience to me), but I won’t go there because It Follows never convinced me it had that level of conceptual thought behind it.

So we know that I felt like it overall lacked a point.  That’s not the worst crime, and would only bring the film down to an average rating.  So let’s continue.

For a film that does stress the unknown, it commits the cardinal sin that ruins that: it makes it known.  Not via explanations, as blabbered about above, but by bringing people besides our lead into the mix, and making the threat “real.”  A big part of the tension established is that only those affected are… uh, affected.  And Mitchell sticks to this for a while, but, again, as part of that “let’s fill up time,” he pulls back the curtain; he clearly makes the monster real.  All of the tension for me went out the window at this point.  So it goes from interesting premise and creepy, just undeveloped to… interesting premise.

And now let’s get into the bits that knocked it down to two.

The look and sound of the movie is somewhere between House of the Devil and Drive.  The 80s horror vibe – via the music, the general look of the sets – is very HotD, though it’s certainly not as “pure” of an 80s vision as Ti West’s great lil’ flick was.  And from Drive it borrows a certain lingering sleekness, and a crisp visual style that makes the 80s-ness clearly an anachronism.  But: amongst the old TVs and radios and lack of cell phones, one girl has a fucking E-Reader.  Sure, she reads applicable quotes from it, but I’m not sure why those couldn’t be read from a book.  The characters dress and look and talk more like modern young adults, so I think that was enough to counter the 80s vibe and make things feel timeless.  I appreciated that.  And then as soon as the fucking E-Reader came out (and it’s especially distracting because it’s housed in a seashell – so, like, a model that doesn’t really exist) – I felt like Mitchell had totally botched the look.  It’s the only detail (or the only notable one) that clearly doesn’t belong, and it’s distracting as fuck.

Also poorly executed are the shots of TVs and the reader screen.  I get that the flick is low budget; I believe these screens were added in post, and they just don’t look good.  For as confident as the rest of the direction is, these visual hiccups are especially jarring, and I think it would’ve absolutely been more effective to just do the “light shines on character’s faces and we see the back of the TV” shot to indicate they’re watching television.  One more crotch kick on this topic: a character is watching an old movie on an old TV.  The video… is pixellated.  Like Mitchell just used a capture from a youtube video.  Another “take you out of the moment” moment.

Okay, last complaint: the music.  Disasterpiece created a nice 80s sounding score, and Mitchell smartly kept things quiet except for select moments.  Buuut… going back to that movie-watchin’ moment, Mitchell goes diagetic and lets the movie’s soundtrack act as the It Follows soundtrack.  Since the character is watching an old horror movie, thins works really well.  And then the Disasterpiece score suddenly clicks in on top of it.  Not enhancing it, or playing off of it – two separate things.  This poor editing in of the sounds does happen a couple times, where we transition from one mood to another without much warning.  For better or worse, a score should normally act in the background, swaying your emotions.  But in this case, there are moments where the odd timing of score can’t help but make you notice, which undesirably takes attention away from the film.

Whew!

Why the lengthy analysis?  Yeah, well, I wanted to feel justified beyond just saying that it didn’t do much for me.  And I’ve been doing this “this film is awesome you must watch it now!” game for a while – my expectations weren’t high or low.  I think I watched this at face value, and was just left – firstly – with a “that’s it?” feeling, which was then shortly backed up by all of the above considerations.  Mitchell’s got a good eye and the flick had a successfully intriguing premise, but I hope he takes the fame earned from It Follows and lets it nurture some ideas outside of the horror genre, since this attempt sort of stalls after establishing its key plot points.