I am finally able to say I feel more on top of the horror genre. Friday night I saw BABADOOK. Last night at 945 in a movie theater, I saw IT FOLLOWS.
And it did follow indeed.
By now you surely know the concept. Kids have sex to transmit not an STD but a demonic other worldy force. Then it follows them. And wants to kill them..
Let me first stop before anything else and reflect on what I was told IT FOLLOWS was, and then give me thoughts. IT FOLLOWS was the horror movie of the decade, some said. Other painted a haunting picture of a movie that hits deep, that means something, speaks volumes about poverty and modern day economic problems, youthful angst and casual sex without thought. The horror flick has scored well on a number of different websites. Movie reviewers found little about it to be critical ..
So in the constant spirit of daring to be different, I had to find something, right?
Well it was tough.
There really wasn't anything done wrong in IT FOLLOWS, just a lot of things done much better than other films..
The best, overall, the utmost best part of IT FOLLOWS was the score. I am considering purchasing the soundtrack but figure I may not listen to it because it would scare me too much. The music was foreboding. It was somewhat similar to HALLOWEEN at times.. It caused your heart to race and quite often sort of forced you to glance around in the dark movie theater to ensure you weren't going to see someone follow you. The music set the tone. It was amazing.
The other tone setting aspect: The setting. Detroit, 8 mile, and the clash between the suburbs and the inner city. There were so much political, sociological, and economic commentary in the film, you lost track.
The cast of the movie further complimented the storyline. Maika Monroe deserves all of the credit she has been getting. She became a scream queen without screaming.. She is faced with a force that, if you follow it through, will never stop following her and eventually will catch up. Keir Gilchrist played a believable role as Paul. Jake Weary was the 'bad guy' but not really bad as Hugh. It's a tough movie to pin the blame on anyone in.. The rest of the cast compliment the best players in it. . . and they are all likeable and believable as people. In horror sometimes, we get the less interesting characters thrown to the wolves first. In IT FOLLOWS, we were given a cast of people we wanted to see live. We liked them.. Though a bit more background could have been done as to why they all seemed jobless and sad, I think that was the point. Detroit. Economy. Manufacturing base crushed and kids just having too much time on their hands in the fraying safety net of the BURBS.
There were a few other things I thought were amazing..In IT FOLLOWS, we don't really know what the force looks like. It takes on the appearance of many different people.. so what is really behind those human faces? That is the creepy mystery that persists even after the movie is over.
And speaking of over.. the ending 15 minutes were intense. The movie is a little slow in building up a story, but the last few scenes are heavy in action and emotion, raw in horror, and epic in production. The final final final scene gives rise to the possibility that the viewer of the movie is either paranoid or the makers have perfectly set the scene for IT STILL FOLLOWS, a potential sequel..
But I hope there is no sequel.
I think this movie will stand on it own and be a place marker in the history of horror--and perhaps a game changer more than anything. It may sweep away the pointless and give us something we can cherish... a horror film that scares but doesn't do it in a cheap and pointless way. A movie about sex and with nudity, but somehow done in a way that doesn't cheapen the story.
But the music..
The foreboding music.
I think the scenery and the score of the film are dramatic and done the best of all.. I am not going to conclude, as some others have, that this is the best horror movie of the past ten years. But I will certainly say it has the best elements of horror that could make me eventually feel it was the best movie in a decade... that may have started last night driving home in the darkness... when even in a safe car, I found myself glancing at the night time air and pitch black forest around me to ensure that no one was following me.
