I was eleven years old when I watched John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ for the first time. I had video taped it from the television the night before and spent a low key Sunday afternoon drinking it in, one hand ready to swiftly change the channel in case my parents had walked in. At the time of viewing, with slivers of sunlight trespassing warmly through the gaps in the blinds, I found it thrilling but not overly horrific. It was only when I went to bed that night that its true power was revealed. Lying in the darkness my young mind couldn’t help but replay Michael Myers’ brutal homecoming in its entirety and settled on the feature of ‘Halloween’ that was most fresh and disturbing to me; the invasion of suburbia. The idea that the sanctity of my home was no more than an illusion waiting to be violated by a silent murderer hit me hard. Each time I heard a dog’s bark cut short in the night, my mind would conjure images of its slain body slumping to the ground as a mute assassin moved ever closer to my window. The relentlessness of Michael Myers haunted my nights for months and left an indelible gouge on my psyche which few horror films over the years have scratched. ‘It Follows’ is one of them.
‘It Follows’ is the second feature from David Robert Mitchell after his 2010 coming of age story ‘The Myth of the American Sleepover’ and focuses on a gang of American teens in much more hazardous times. The central conceit is simple and brilliant; it centres around nineteen year old Jay, a pretty girl living in the suburbs who seems fairly content with her life. This equilibrium is upended when her new boyfriend reveals that he has passed a curse onto her after they have sex for the first time. A nameless thing will pursue her relentlessly at walking pace until it catches her. She can try to escape but it will always be there, constantly ambling towards her location. What is more it can change its shape to look like any person, familiar or stranger and when it catches her it will kill her. The only way to remove the curse is for her to pass it on by having sex with someone else, at which point its focus will change to this new target but once it kills them it will return to its pursuit of Jay and so on down the chain of sexual encounters.
The master stroke of this set up is that it allows the audience to do much of the suspense building for themselves. Being aware that the creature is strolling towards its prey at such a regular pace means that the viewer is constantly aware of the passing of time in the world of the film. Moments of downtime when Jay is stationary, doubting her predicament or incapacitated, are excruciating because we know that her phantom takes no such breaks. Although it would be easy to outrun the pursuing monster in a straight chase, the fact that it can disguise itself as any person, alive or dead means that the audience, much like Jay, spends a great deal of the movie scanning the far corners of the frame for any sign of approaching pedestrians. I found myself studying the background with growing intensity as the movie progressed, in much the same way as I had whilst trying to spot a lurking Michael Myers in ‘Halloween’ years before. A further twist is added to proceedings by the fact that the creature is invisible to all but the victims of the curse, leading to a heightened sense of paranoia as Jay constantly has to ask her friends if they can see any advancing strangers. This subtle dictation of pace means that Mitchell is free to explore horrific tension without having to resort to jump scares. That is not to say there are no moments of shock but each of these are earned through agonising set ups which linger longer in the mind than the immediate gratification of leaping horrors.
Mitchell has set his story in a warmly autumnal American suburbia which seems to exist out of any particular time frame. People use mobile phones and e readers but also frequent movie theatres with organist accompaniments. Adding to this timeless atmosphere, adults are for the large part absent from the narrative, only glimpsed in photographs or in the disguises adopted by the creature. The teenagers in the story are very much in it alone, having to make life or death decisions without the influence of grown ups. It is fortunate for Jay that she is surrounded by a group of endlessly supportive and trusting friends. This was the one aspect of ‘It Follows’ that struck me as slightly under developed. Considering the outlandishness of her claims that an invisible monster is stalking her, Jay’s friends are incredibly accepting of her tale. I could understand sympathy and concern on their part but they are willing to trust the ramblings of their traumatised friend on face value for much of the film with no evidence of her veracity. This is not to criticise the performances of the young cast, they all fulfil their roles capably. Indeed, special credit must go to The Guest’s Maika Monroe as Jay, who adds a resilience and drive to the standard scream queen archetype.
One of the most affecting aspects of the movie has to be the pulsing score provided by Richard Vreeland. He has effectively crafted his own spin on John Carpenter’s gloriously home-made synth soundtrack for ‘Halloween’. The humming growl and tortured squeal of his electronics mirror the rising tension and add an indelibly creepy layer to an already creepy movie. And although it is an over-saturated word, “creepy” really does describe the pervading atmosphere of ‘It Follows’. It captures a sense of blossoming dread which starts at the corners of your peripheral vision and then traces its brittle, icy fingers skitteringly down your spine. It is perhaps not as solid or layered as last year’s Babadook but it is certainly as, if not more, frightening. It conjured that rare feeling of being incapacitated by a film; unable to look away as a widening sheet of horrified adrenaline floods one’s system. And in an appropriate fashion for a film which honours so many of ‘Halloween’s strong points from setting to pace, I found myself lying in bed the night after watching ‘It Follows’ when a strange sensation swept over me. As my mind began to process the macabre highlights of the film I became very aware of my slightly ajar window; it wasn’t a large gap but certainly large enough for something to get into my room. I found myself isolated and unsettled, wrapped tightly in a protective duvet, working out a pre emptive escape plan for an unseen home invasion. And as I lay there, mid-thirties and shaking in the dark, a part of me couldn’t help but smile in ghoulish nostalgia; ‘Halloween’ may have finally found its heir.
I give It Follows eight Pauls out of Critoph.
The Critoph Factor 