“I recall enjoying David Robert Mitchell’s first film, 2010’s The Myth of the American Sleepover, just fine. An ensemble comedy/drama centering on a group of Detroit teenagers, it was a pleasant, last-weekend-of-summer kind of movie. It showed that Mitchell already had a knack for capturing the suburbs with artful cinematography and for getting solid, naturalistic performances from a cast of young, novice actors, but I also recall thinking that it was missing a certain something that would make it a truly memorable piece of work. Turns out that missing something may have been an invigorating injection of genre storytelling, resulting in the instant-classic, thrillingly original horror film It Follows.
“Set in the flat, autumnal suburbs that are very much in the same neighborhood as Halloween’s Haddonfield and A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Springfield, during an indeterminate decade, It Follows has a story that has the ruthless simplicity of a scary urban legend. ‘It’ is a malevolent, mysterious creature (of completely unknown origin) that is passed from person to person following sexual intercourse, like (as my partner put it) a ‘demonic STD.’ (That’s a big oversimplification, but it admittedly works). It looks like a person, but it can look like any person it chooses to, at any time. And it simply…follows. It moves slowly, but it never stops coming, and if it catches up with you enough to get a hold on you, you’re dead. The only way to get rid of it is to pass it on through sex, and even then, you can never relax because if it gets the person you passed it onto, it’s coming back your way. The idea of never being able to rest again (‘Wherever you are, it’s somewhere headed straight for you”) is remarkably terrifying and bleak, if you think about it.
“It’s a borderline silly premise, but somehow It Follows wound up being not just one of the very best horror films in many years, but one of 2015’s very best films, irrespective of genre. A lot of that is due to the enormous amount of atmosphere and style the film has. Put simply, despite its many evident influences, I’ve never seen a film that looks, sounds, and feels quite like this one. Mike Gioulakis’ cinematography echoes that found in John Carpenter’s classics with its ultra-widescreen compositions and Steadicam use, complemented with motionless, interestingly disorienting overhead shots, and one terrifically eerie and effective revolving shot. And there aren’t enough positive adjectives in the dictionary for the excellent synthesizer score by Disasterpeace (the stage name of composer Rich Vreeland), which, again, partially recalls John Carpenter’s brilliantly scaled-down electronic scores, rich in both melody and menace. These stylistic elements, combined with Mitchell’s almost–entirely dead-serious treatment of the story and engaging performances by a talented young cast, make It Follows an uncommonly artful and intriguing horror film. It works particularly well on repeat viewings, as well. It’s the rare horror film that becomes scarier the more you watch it, as you are able to fully explore the chilling implications of its story, and the creepily ambiguous identity of ‘it,’ which stubbornly resists any attempts at analysis or understanding.” ~ Jason Alley
No comments:
Post a Comment