Review Of It Follows!

Glib Reviews Of New Movies!

It Follows
- Directed By David Robert Mitchell

It Follows is a great example of how you can make a really decent film with little more than a solid concept, some punchy dialogue, over the top mood music, and a few great locations. The movie itself is a wee bit overhyped in my opinion. It is a very good little movie, but I wasn’t quite as blown away as some folks seem to be. There is little that is revolutionary, rather the movie turns a couple of horror tropes on their heads, and tosses in some really good acting from the young actors in the piece. 

In the setup, we see a scantily glad young woman running from some unseen (to all but her) force following her. When we get to our heroes, who are tres modern, though often drive cool older cars. Maybe because: Detroit is the setting. Without spoiling things too much, what makes this film so clever is that it turns the teenage sex (if you do it, you die) movie tropes with some nice twists. While the cliche of sex being deadly for the teens is what they are working with, the kids have a chance to fight what following them, and they do, in typical dumb kid fashion, rather than somehow becoming seasoned creepy being hunters overnight.

I might show this film in a horror film class, as an example of pretty traditional structures (the music is so John Carpenter-esque as to be occasionally humorous and not as frightening as it might be) twisted in such a way as to seem unique. The way that the kids figure out how to stop, or get rid of what is following one of them is smarter than many movies that would just end, in hopes of sequel green lights. There is room for that here, but I kind of hope not. The concept is cool, but overuse would dim it significantly.

A really solid little thriller that doesn’t waste a lot of time, despite giving all the central characters far more humanity than you see in most horror/thriller/suspense movies. I quite enjoyed seeing this in the actual theatre instead of waiting for the dvd. Beware the hype, though, it is good, but by no means is it some kind of masterpiece.


8.0 really nice dates that go horribly supernaturally wrong outta 10


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