It Follows

Looking for a date movie for you and that special someone you’re beginning to woo? Then you may wish to steer clear of It Follows, which follows the terrifying path of the nastiest sexually-transmitted infection of all time. But if you’re looking to put your nervous system through the wringer for a couple of hours, the search ends here, with US writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s provocative, unsettling chiller.

No sooner has Jay (Maika Monroe, convincingly scared shitless) slept with her new boyfriend for the first time than she finds herself chloroformed and tied to a chair, and that’s when the real horror begins. He informs her he’s passed on something, something that will follow her – and kill her if it catches her – unless she passes it on to someone else by sleeping with them. But even that isn’t a guarantee she’ll be rid of it forever.

Mitchell depicts the scenario using an understated, matter-of-fact approach that gives it the texture of a nightmare. (Many a comparison has been made to Halloween maker John Carpenter’s best work, although one gets the feeling Mitchell has also watched his fair share of early George Romero and Wes Craven.)

Everything seems so normal, even mundane, until ‘it’ – sometimes taking the form of a stranger, sometimes the form of a loved one – shambles into the frame, disturbingly blank in its expression and implacable in its pursuit. The filmmaker doesn’t overplay it, with the unnerving soundtrack by Disasterpeace the main concession to traditional horror-movie tropes, and the result, like its antagonist, is something that lingers and haunts.