2014, Movies

It Follows (2014, David Robert Mitchell)

This is a refreshing horror film that takes the old trope about women getting punished for premarital sex by a supernatural force and spins it in a new way that feels far more real and effective.

There’s a lot to like about this film:

  • after the opening kill, it takes its sweet time getting going,
  • it exists in a world that feels very real and very far from Horror conventions
  • the family’s poverty is implied through set design, not outright stated
  • the traumatic past is suggested at, not actually explained
  • there are a couple of pretty neat shots and there are few rapid cuts
  • though there are some cliches they are handled well (and sometimes subverted as when The Guy Who Explains the Plot looks like an idiot)
  • the lead is not treated as completely nuts by everyone she knows
  • the last shot is pretty good.

So, a lot to like.

I did have a few nitpicks:

  • the score feels very of its time
  • Jenn thinks the women’s underwear is ridiculous (and why is the first victim wearing heels???)
  • I can’t say I loved some of the slow motion and don’t really know why they went with it.

And then there’s the climax:

SPOILERS

There is very little CGI in this movie but when it, um, rains (sorry) it pours. The climax has a lot of CGI (at least compared to the the rest of the film) and it doesn’t look good at all. Particularly the blood in the pool just looks completely fake – like they couldn’t just use some kind of food dye? But it’s not just the CGI blood, it’s the reason for it. What are we supposed to take from this moment? We don’t know anything about It except that, um, it follows, so what are we supposed to learn from a pool full of CIG blood? I think the film would have been more effective if It was just gone. That would have rendered the final shot even more effective.

7/10

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