It Follows (2014)

End-of-term party at the office yesterday, so I figured why not follow up one horror with another? I'd been noticing 2014's It Follows receiving a lot of positive critical attention, and while teen slasher flicks aren't normally my bag, I thought it might be worth a shot.

The premise, at least, is intriguing, if not technically anything new - teenage sex has been carrying unwanted supernatural consequences in the movies since the 70s, if not long before. Even this, in fact, is part of a far older tradition, dating back to the likes of Red Riding Hood; the metaphors become more oblique the further back you go, but they're still there, warning us that growing up can be a dangerous and unforgiving process.

The kids in It Follows have less in common with fairytale protagonists, however, than those written about by the likes of Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl, inhabiting a sunlit world where adults seem almost entirely incidental. Our heroine, Jay (Maika Monroe) is first seen lounging in a collapsible pool, planning an afternoon with friends followed by a date with the dashing Hugh (Jake Weary). Their romantic evening out is curtailed when Hugh suffers what looks like a severe anxiety attack; however, by dusk, things seem to be back on track, and before long they're heading to a local beauty spot for a romantic encounter on the back seat of Hugh's car. As Jay basks in the afterglow, however, Hugh drugs her, and she awakens, tied to a chair, in a deserted parking lot. Hugh shows her the demon which is now pursuing her in human form, and will continue to do so until she has intercourse with somebody else; should it kill her, it will go after Hugh, and then the person that infected him. Hugh's actions were callous (if fairly understandable), but Jay is made of more moral stuff; along with her loyal friends, she decides to attempt to defeat the demon even if it costs her her sanity.

I really wanted to like this one; it pulls off the clever trick of taking the superficial trappings of a teen slasher flick and using them to clothe what's actually a superior suspense thriller. Low on gore but high on tension, it boasts an elegantly minimalist soundtrack and some of the most impressive jump scares I've ever seen. It's intelligent, at least by genre standards, and uses post-industrial Detroit to create a temporally unfocused setting that's at once disturbingly otherworldly and all too familiar.

So, what went wrong? I'm not sure anything did, to be honest, it's just that I'm too old to get with the teenage zeitgeist. Everything was so muted and faded and flattened, from the pallette to the performances to the prevailing emotions. Struggles take place in slow motion; characters scream, and the sound engineering reduces them to silence. It's aesthetically interesting, sort of, but the problem is that it dampens down the tension and the urgency of the piece. I've heard a lot of people say how badly rattled they felt after watching, but the only nagging fears to remain with me were the ones that my sight and hearing might have started going on me. 

An interesting film, at least on an intellectual level, but not for me and probably not made for me, either. It's nice to see today's teens getting some good ones for themselves, though.