It Follows (2014) [Blu-ray]
Horror | Mystery

Tagline: It doesn't think. It doesn't feel. It doesn't give up.

For 19-year-old Jay, fall should be about school, boys and weekends out at the lake. But after a seemingly innocent sexual encounter, she finds herself plagued by strange visions and the inescapable sense that someone, or something, is following her. Jay and her teenage friends must now find a way to escape the horrors that seem to be only a few steps behind in this critically-acclaimed chiller that Bloody Disgusting calls "the scariest movie of 2015."

Storyline: For nineteen-year-old Jay, Autumn should be about school, boys and week-ends out at the lake. But after a seemingly innocent sexual encounter, she finds herself plagued by strange visions and the inescapable sense that someone, something, is following her. Faced with this burden, Jay and her friends must find a way to escape the horrors, that seem to be only a few steps behind. Written by Jose Tamayo

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, July 2, 2015 -- Good Horror movies are scare, er, scarce these days, and great ones have practically died, er, disappeared from the scene altogether. The genre seems to have drifted away from the legitimate thrills and chills of decades past and the superhuman monster craze of the 1980s that produced some of the genre's most iconic characters to devolve into a nonsensical world of dueling styles with overblown gross-out gore on one side and watered-down plots to fit the box-office friendly PG-13 realm and lure in those all-important teenage date night dollars on the other. Director David Robert Mitchell's breakthrough film It Follows defies modern genre conventions with a mesmerizing Horror masterpiece that takes, shapes, and makes its own the best the genre has to offer and never goes near the worst. Deep psychological scares, unbearable tension, beautiful photography, good characters, excellent performances, relatable themes, quality music -- everything works in total, entrancing harmony. This is the total package, an instant classic that should be remembered as one of the great Horror movies of its, or any, time.

Jay (Maika Monroe) has always dreamed of the perfect date, and she's finally on it. An attractive young man named Hugh (Jake Weary) takes her out on the town and, later, makes love to her in his parked car near an abandoned warehouse. She's fully satisfied, but he knocks her out. She awakens tied to a chair. He means her no harm, not personally, anyway. But he has put her life in danger. Through sexual intercourse, he's passed a curse on to her. Until she passes it along to someone else through sex, someone, something, will stalk her. Worse, if it kills her, it will move back to the previous victim, meaning a cursed person's life will never be safe. It moves slow, ambling along almost like a zombie, but it's endlessly determined and could come in the shape of any person. She quickly realizes that he's not playing games. She works to convince her friends that the curse is indeed real and goes on the run to buy time and devise a plan of attack against it. But the relentless curse follows her everywhere she goes, and she'll never be safe again, even if she passes it on to someone else.

Wow. Wow. Wow. If ever a movie came along at just the right time to completely reinvigorated a desperate, dying genre, this is it. It Follows demonstrates the beauty of structural simplicity, the elegance of a finely-tuned script, and the benefits of a filmmaker who not only understands the craft and the genre in which he or she is working but pours an obvious passion for it into the film and works from a deep knowledge base of what works, what doesn't, and how to best, and most effectively, blend both classic motifs and new ideas into a single, grand experience. The film embodies the Horror genre at its most superficial basic -- following characters who, by way of sexual activity, are stalked by a relentless figure -- and at the same time its most mesmerizingly complex best, complex by way of its outwardly simple yet intoxicatingly precise, detailed physical construction and mesmerizing in its perfectly tuned psychological chills that build to an incredibly realized climax. The movie finds the perfect balance between pure scares, intense cat-and-mouse games, and dark psychological underpinnings, all without resorting to excess gore and working on a premise that's admittedly absurd but that plays on a number of levels nonetheless, something that's at once both an allegory of the dangers of promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases and, perhaps more apropos to the Horror genre, a unique spin on the old "have sex and die" crutch that was a genre mainstay plot device and has become something of catch-all definition of classic 80s Horror.

The lifeblood of 80s Horror does indeed run through It Follows' veins, and Halloween's DNA courses through every inch of every frame. The film walks the fine line between imitation and simply using a classic film as a guide. Its premise is similar, essentially the unstoppable boogeyman coming after a specific target, but the film also replicates, to perfection, Halloween's precision timing; adherence to simplicity; and photographical excellence including thoughtful shot composition and using the frame as not only a story conveyance but a palette on which a more beautiful, thoughtful, and artful cinematic experience is presented. There's also a number of subtle bits that clearly pay homage to John Carpenter's film; various shots of Jay and her friends walking down the street, the camera matching their pace and tracking backwards while in front of them, feel eerily reminiscent of similar shots in Halloween's Haddonfield. A shot in which Jay's assailant approaches her school will remind audiences of a scene in which Laurie sees Michael outside her school's window. Even that every television in It Follows is tuned to old black-and-white Horror/Sci-Fi films recalls Halloween's use of The Thing from Another World as a support tool to tie the night together. It Follows may not be quite as perfect as Halloween -- John Carpenter's classic is arguably the greatest Horror film of all time -- but it approaches it in every way, demonstrates its mastery of that film's lessons, and is certainly amongst the handful of great Horror films to come since.

But it's not just a great script, a quality idea, and a knowledgeable and passionate director that makes a movie work. There are plenty of other areas of concern that can break even the best material and stymie even the finest filmmaker. Fortunately, It Follows hits on all cylinders. The cast is uniformly excellent. They're not challenged to stretch all that far because the script keeps things so gloriously simple, but each of them -- from Maika Monroe on down the line -- feel completely absorbed in the movie and their characters, buying it entirely and fully on board with the movie's structure and style, understanding its "less is more" approach and never trying to steal the spotlight but rather take their necessary place in it. The film is beautifully photographed and edited; D.P. Mike Gioulakis gets everything he can from each location, whether paying homage to Halloween in those aforementioned neighborhood exteriors or using interesting environments like an abandoned warehouse and its adjacent, overgrown parking lot or a poorly lit indoor swimming pool to the film's visual and dramatic advantage alike. Music is terrific, too. Composer Disasterpeace gives the movie an edgy neovintage vibe that at once both recalls the classic 70s and 80s genre notes while still carrying its own uniquely identifiable tone and modern edge about it. It Follows is a masterpiece in every way that truly must be experienced to believe.

There's not enough praise one can bestow upon It Follows. It's a modern classic that fully understands and embraces everything that's good about the Horror genre (psychological scares, a refined script, moody photography, a creative yet familiar core idea) and leaves out everything that isn't (overwhelming/unnecessary gore, cheap jump scares, watered-down details, found footage). Every bit of the production is special. Everything works. Everything is magic. This is the best Horror film to come along in a long, long time and a film that needs to be at the top of every movie watcher's must-see list. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of It Follows features excellent video and audio. Supplements are few in number but satisfying. Very highly recommended.

[CSW] -1.2- This must have been written for all the paranoid schizophrenics by a paranoid schizophrenic. Not that you have to be schizophrenic just a high degree of paranoia will suffice. It will terrify those that have a natural feeling of impending doom. And especially those that can be made to believe that it could be a body shifting anybody that is tracking you with the intent to do you bodily harm. Needless to say my suspension-of-disbelief collapsed early on and never recovered. When you mix the fear and uncertainty that naturally accompanies coming-of-age with the idea that sex is the mechanism for creating an unforgiving and unstoppable terror, you have the perfect mix for younger minds. I guess I'm just a little too old for this.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.



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