It Follows: 13 Nerdy Nights of Horror Year 2 - Day 13

            Happy Halloween, boils and ghouls! Now you might be expecting me to go into one of my favorite classic horrors, but I want to talk about a film that I’ve been dying to talk about for quite some time now. Plus, I have a feeling that this film will be remembered sometime in the future as a horror classic of the modern age. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you David Robert Mitchell’s “It Follows.”

            The film centers around a girl named Jay, a Michigan college student who has been going out with this guy, Hugh. After a date which ended with car sex, Hugh drugs Jay with chloroform, where she wakes up tied to a wheelchair. He explains to her that she has now contracted a curse from him, and now is being hunted by a creature that can change its appearance to anyone. If Jay wishes to stay alive, she must keep away from it and try to sleep with somebody who hasn’t been part of the chain and explain the whole ordeal to the next person. If they die, the creature will go back to the previous person it was pursuing, all the way back up the beginning.

            The film not only acts as a really interesting take on the slow moving slasher villains like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees from “Halloween” and “Friday the 13^th,” but it also acts as a love letter to the classic creature features of George A. Romero and John Carpenter. The backstory with how the entity does all of its killings and how it picks its targets is really interesting, and I love how it’s all a metaphor for contracting STDs, making it a much smarter film that what people would expect.

            The tension in the film is also incredibly well done. The way the creature slowly follows its target and how it could be just about anybody is a terrifying thought, as it fills its prey’s thoughts with anxiety and restless behavior. It also lends itself to scares that are well deserved, and not being ones where the volume is jacked up to high to try and create tension like most other horror films today. It’s an unstoppable creature, and I applaud the film’s ambiguous ending as to whether or not they succeeded. Also, the music Richard Vreeland aka Disasterpeace is simply astounding, having a really unique 80’s feel to it and adding to the suspense.

            The performances in the film are some of the best of any horror flick, with the best coming from Maika Monroe as Jay. She really lets the dilemma she’s going through be expressed, with a dreadful fear sticking with her at all times. While there might be moments where you suspect her to do something out of character, I always thought of her actions of her doing whatever option she had to stay alive as long as possible, and figure out if there are any other options left for her. She definitely fits right into the caliber of iconic horror ladies like Jamie Lee Curtis and Heather Langenkamp, and I do hope that Monroe gets more roles further on in the future.

            Now before I give to the rating, let me real quick talk about my favorite horror film from last year, “The Babadook.”

            The film told the story of a mother, who is dealing with PTSD and her over-imaginative son, as they are being haunted by an entity known as Mr. Babadook, who may or may not be in the mother’s mind. The big question is which of these two films do I prefer? Well, bear in mind, they’re both two completely different films, as “The Babadook” is a psychological horror film that tackles the subject of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, where as “It Follows” is the typical creature feature that has a deep message about sexually transmitted diseases. I think both films are incredibly damn good, but if you had to twist my arm and pick one…I’d say “The Babadook” is the superior film, mostly for one major aspect: Fear of the mind. You never clearly see the Babadook’s image completely lit, and that’s what truly makes it scary. The fact that you never see the monster, and that it might all just be their imagination. Regardless of which you choose, I love both films, and I hope they’ll both be remembered as classics in the years to come.

            “It Follows” is truly a film that I recommend watching for Halloween if you haven’t already. I loved the acting, I love the story, the scares and tension are great, and the atmosphere is excellent. I know a lot of people might have been turned off by the film, thinking it was overhyped and might have ruined it for them, and I might be one of those people overhyping it. If you don’t like it, then I can understand why. I’m not the kind of person to say people are right or wrong, I’m just a guy who likes to share his opinions on films to whoever is interested in what I have to say.

Rating: 10/10