Movie Review - It Follows

It Follows

2014

The Cast

The premise of this film is a good one - a person has sex and a supernatural spirit begins to follow them, with the intention of murdering them.  The only way for that person to survive the entity is to have sex with someone and pass the "curse" onto them.  Should they die then the spirit reverts back to following the last person once again.

Unfortunately, the premise is not fully utilised in the story, there are quite a few holes.  The main hole in the story is the origin of the "curse"; we are not told it is a curse, it may be something else; we are not told why the killings are happening; or how it all started.  These things deter from the story because at the end of the movie these issues made me feel as though the story was incomplete and lacking.

Had these issues been resolved it would have made the story and the movie a lot stronger, and possibly a lot darker and more haunting.

Taking that into consideration, what you do get in this movie is a strange surreal feeling, this is due to the direction and the soundtrack.  These are very reminiscent of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.  It's as though they had a baby and his name was David Robert Mitchell.

The opening scene has John Carpenter's Halloween written all over it.  The entire film took me back to my youth in the 80's and I loved it.  Sometimes, though, the soundtrack was too jarring, as Cronenberg's electronic soundtrack was apt to be, though here it doesn't work as well.

The acting is above average with the mostly unknown cast doing a pretty decent job of adding to the tension and atmosphere of the movie.  Even though there's not much gore, it's the palpable tension and atmosphere which make this a spooky supernatural story.

So if you like a slow burning taut eerie tale then this could be right up your street.

I give this an eerily spooky 5.75 out of 10.

The Trailer