Movie Review: It Follows

There's a long tradition of linking horror and sexuality.  Vampires get to be seductive, mummies and werewolves get to stalk their obsessions, and slashers get to kill teenagers while they're doing the deed-- if we're not punished for having sex, then we may succumb to the darkness of it.  It Follows keeps this tradition alive as it depicts what has to be the worst STI ever!  The basic set-up is of a curse involving a shape-shifting entity that casually walks toward you no matter where you go.  The only way to get rid of the curse is to pass it on to someone else, and the only way to do that is through sex.

I'll admit, I love this premise-- the idea of danger slowly following you around, and you just barely keeping ahead of it, is an old nightmare of mine.  Another thing I like about the film is that there's almost no gore.  Except for a couple gruesome scenes (which are still tame by the standards of most horror), the film gets by on suspense and a palpable sense of dread; I don't mind gore, but I prefer the type of horror that doesn't fetishize it.  Another plus is that the social dynamic between the kids is more sophisticated than most teensploitation flicks (which you might expect from the writer-director of a great coming-of-age film, The Myth of the American Sleepover).

I enjoyed this film, though I did have some issues with it.  First of all, the synth-tastic score was a bit distracting.  And I'm not normally a nit-picker about these things, but as curses go, it seems like this one should've been easy to beat-- maybe I just need to chalk it up to panicky teenagers.  And where are the adults?  These characters aren't isolated by any means; with break-ins, property damage and people dying, it's hard to imagine the police wouldn't have been more involved.  But I suppose that would've messed with the metaphor.

All-in-all, I would recommend this for anyone who wants to check out a creepy film without all the gore, but with fairly realistic character interaction.