Theatrical Reviews: It Follows

It is rare that horror movies get good reviews from critics, myself included; and when they do I’m always in the theater on opening day.  The only thing that outweighs my hatred for crappy horror films is my love for great ones.  So I was excited as all get-out when I read reviews for the indie horror flick It Follows.

The horror genre is a delicate one.  It requires a certain kind of mood and artistic creativity to get it right.  You can never be predictable, you can never be ridiculous and you must always be credible.  The Exorcist, for example, as beloved as it is, has never been a favorite of mine simply because I was never sold on the fact that the little girl was a demon; she just looked like a girl in make-up to me.

It Follows isn’t quite the horror masterpiece that it’s being made out to be, but it is a really good movie nonetheless.  It’s another in a long line of surprisingly good horror movies that are about sex; and it milks its base premise for all it’s worth.

The second act alone is fervishly captivating.  The concept is well conceived, and wonderfully orchestrated.  We never find out what “It” is, or why it “follows.”  For all we know John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Bodysnatchers and The Invisible Man all had a monster baby.  The mysteriousness of the circumstances adds to the scariness and atmosphere however; so the lack of information is probably a good thing.

The performances are all okay, and the cinematography is passable; but mostly what makes the movie work are the stirring horror sequences and the solid atmosphere that rotate around it’s well conceived premise.

There are a few things that keep It Follows from reaching the heights of any of the horror classics that I’ve name dropped in this review.  The movie is focused on a group of mostly un-interesting teenagers that aren’t too dissimilar from the teenagers in the average stupid horror flick, and they do a couple of stupid teenager things that are kind of annoying.

Also; while the movies first two acts shine, it’s third act falters in comparison.  It’s final sequences add needed meaning to the movies plot; but it comes off as kind of dull and anti-climactic for such a riveting movie.  I wish they had ended the picture with a bit more of a bang.

As a whole I really liked It Follows, and will most likely watch it again.  On the scale of recent horror movie scale it’s bellow new greats like The Babbadoook, or The Guest, but it’s pretty awesome none-the-less.  It Follows is a must see for any horror movie fan with half a brain.