In a time where horror movies are trying their hardest to use found footage and fast cuts to create a sense of action and powerlessness, IT FOLLOWS does the exact opposite and creates one of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen. The film focuses on simplicity creating a relatable concept that doesn’t need effects to put us into the action. Sleep with the wrong person and “It” will come after you. It can take any shape, can only been seen by you, and if it catches up to you… you are dead. The first scene of the movie establishes It’s power, and every moment past that keeps the tension of this ticking bomb no matter how calm the moment might seem. Even if the characters are sitting talking we are always watching, using the wide angle as our tool.
Writer-director David Robert Mitchell evokes more from this simple concept than a lesser director might. He afflicts this monster onto young Jay (Maika Monroe) and her group of friends to create almost a Bildungsroman story during the periods of rest. Jay isn’t just a surrogate screamer, she reacts to every new piece of information as we might and grows to try and fight it, making her failure hurt even more. The acting is fantastic, proving there is benefit to using mainly unknown actors. I never felt that these people were not the characters they portrayed on screen. The blaring strap l staccato violins or 80’s synth music used interchangeably doesn’t quite mix and sometimes took me out of the film, but it’s a small complaint.
What puts this movie over the edge is the way it’s shot. In contrast the the fast cuts seen in modern actions and horrors, David Robert Mitchell keeps long shots of an often unmoving camera. When “It” does its slow death march towards a still wide shot it strikes a sense of powerlessness. When the camera pans 360 degrees around a stationary subject it so effectively conveys dynamic action, reaction of environment, and follow up that it’s hard to see why it’s not a more commonly used technique. In the context of the film or provides an ever searching eye that forces us into paranoia. Even a talking head with an ambiguously growing out of focus object in the background is a subtle enough touch to strike fear. The cinematography is the film’s greatest tool in inspiring fear, and it forces our perspective of what’s happening. We can only see the characters through a window because they are trapped. We can’t see “It” because at this moment the most scared characters are the friends.
IT FOLLOWS will hopefully be a turning point for the horror genre. Every scare is derived from important steps forward in the story and develops an important balance. It manages to tell a story about youth, sexuality, fear, and (much like “It”) the scares never stop marching forward.
