It Follows

Sex and horror go hand-in-hand in movies. But rarely is sex part of the chain of horror. It Follows addresses this with a sexually transmitted curse. An infected person is followed by something that will kill them if it catches them. If they have sex before it catches them, then their sex partner becomes the target instead. But if the target person is caught and killed then the previous person in the chain becomes the target again. An idea that puts a certain amount of responsibility on the current victim of the curse.

While It Follows is punctuated by well timed jump scares, once we realize that Jay is the heroine then it becomes an exercise in rising tension as we try to figure out how she is going to survive, even with the help of her friends and sisters. While perhaps a little short on laughs, it also avoids some of the typical silly life shortening behaviours that are stock in trade in other horror films. It Follows keeps the gore level down and has a refreshingly different idea on horror to normal run of zombies, vampires, super resourceful crazy serial killers, ghosts or swarms of mutated creatures. Combining fear of sexually transmitted diseases with a thing that behaves like something from a bad dream makes It Follows feel like something you are more likely to experience, albeit from the safety of your own bed.

While almost every other American horror is set among the middle or upper middle class It Follows has a working class setting. Oddly the décor and technology screams 1980s - except for an ebook reader in the shape of scallop shells.

This film was made by the director of The Myth of the American Sleepover, it is a huge improvement over that film!

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5