It Follows
(2014) 100 Min.
Rated: R (nudity, sex, slight gore)
Country: USA
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Stars: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★★
A girl in Detroit is given a curse of a creature that follows her anywhere with the intention of destroying her.
Synopsis:
Jamie “Jay” Height (Monroe) is a nineteen year old girl who has a normal life in the suburbs.
One day she goes on a date with Hugh, the guy she’s seeing, and he suddenly gets startled when he realizes Jay can’t see the girl he sees. He quickly leaves the theater and tells Jay that he just felt sick suddenly. They continue their date as if nothing happened.
Jay is a little worried and talks to her sister Kelly about it. She brushes it off and so does Jay.
Jay and her boyfriend spend some time at a lake. Things turn passionate and they have sex in the backseat of his car. Jay day dreams about things she thought about when she was younger. Aspirations she had to be older and hang out with friends that are realized in her teen years. Just at that moment he puts a towel of chloroform over her mouth.
Moments later Jay wakes up tied to a wheelchair in an abandoned building in Detroit. Hugh has a flashlight and desperately looking for something. He explains quickly that he had something, but now that the had the encounter in the car he passed it onto Jay. He tells her to quickly have sex with someone just to pass it on. He also asks her not to let it get close and kill her because then the creature will go after him too. It can take on any form and walks slowly towards them. Hugh wheels Jay to an edge of the building and shows her a nude woman walking towards them. Jay is frightened. Hugh explains that this is the only way she’ll believe him. They both escape from the building in his car.
Hugh drops her off still tied up at her house. The police are soon called. Jay testifies to a police officer what happened. She’s taken to a hospital and eventually taken home.
One day while at college she sees an old woman walk straight towards her. No one else around her reacts to her presence. Jay leaves the class and runs over to an ice cream stand where her sister and friend Paul (Gilchrist) work. Jay tells them how the guy told her that something would follow her and about the old woman, but they tell her not to believe it.
Jay’s friends Paul and Yara (Luccardi) decide to stay with her and Kelly. During the night Jay can’t sleep in her room and decides to talk to Paul in the living room. The share memories about childhood, but then they hear a window break. Paul sees nothing and goes off to tell Kelly. Jay goes to investigate and sees a creepy woman walking towards her slowly while peeing herself. Jay screams and runs upstairs to hide in her room. Her friends try to calm her, but when they open the door to let Yara in the room a large man appears behind her. Jay jumps off the small balcony onto the lawn out of desperation. None of her friends see the creatures and Jay flees on a bike to a children’s park.
Her friends find her and their neighbor Greg shows up too. They drive off to an abandoned house to investigate and find Hugh. Paul finds a photo of Hugh and a girl wearing a sports letter jacket. He recognizes the school.
Jay and Greg go to the school and find out Hugh’s real name is Jeff. They find out where Jeff lives and talk to him. He tells the group that it’s better if Jay just has sex and passes it on to someone else.
Greg takes everyone to a house his father would take him to by a lake where they would hunt when he was a child. Jay learns to shoot a gun there.
While at the lake the creature gets close enough to touch Jay’s hair. Paul hits it with a chair and it throws Paul aside. Jay tries to shoot at the creature and it momentarily stuns it. Jay runs and takes the car. She pulls out but then runs the car into a cornfield and ends up in a hospital.
Jay has her arm in a cast and is living in fear. She and Greg have sex. Greg cares for Jay but doesn’t really believe in her story.
One day Jay sees Greg walking to his own house at night. That Greg tries to open the door and throws a brick at the window. Jay realizes that it’s the creature and follows it inside the house in an attempt to warn Greg. She sees Greg open the door to the creature which now looks like his mom. The woman attacks Greg and kills him.
Jay drives off in fear, sobbing. She parks in the middle of the woods and falls asleep. In the morning she sees three young men on a boat at the lake nearby. She wordlessly removes some of her clothes and gets into the water.
Jay knows that it will still follow her and Paul asks her to give it to him, but she refuses. He then asks her to trust him. They go to a large indoor pool and prop up electrical items plugged in around the pool. Jay gets into the water as bait.
Soon the creature arrives, but instead of getting into the water, it throws items into the pool. Paul tries to shoot a gun at it and Jay is able to escape. When she peers into the water it’s clouded red with blood.
Later she and Paul have sex. Both say they don’t feel any different than before. Later the family portrait is shown and it’s revealed that the creature took the form of Jay’s father when it tried to kill her at the pool.
Paul drives by some prostitutes and the audience is left to decide whether or not he slept with them.
The film ends while Paul and Jay walk hand in hand down a sidewalk, both worn and depressed looking. In the distance behind them a figure looms as if it follows.
Review:
I can’t help but absolutely enjoy this film. It has a great synth soundtrack that harkens back to older horror films. The character development seems real. The characters think and act as teens would in real life.
I have no doubt that some horror fans will find this film a bore. It’s an atmospheric slow burning thriller. It’s not at all a film that relies on jump scares. It’s written in a way where concepts and pacing are what pull the strings of tension. No matter how far they run this thing will follow and therein lies the sense of dread. It can be anyone anywhere at any time.
The film has a sense of timelessness as the setting uses props that could be from any era from the 1950’s to modern day. It plays in a very dreamlike way and the cinematography is very atmospheric.
Maika Monroe once again proves to be a very emotive and versatile actress. I really hope to see her in more films as she has the capability to carry heavy subject matter.
I would most definitely recommend this film to people who like their horror without easy answers and tons of tone, style and atmosphere.