It Follows - 2014

I'd been wanting to rewatch this movie in recent weeks and asked my friend if he wanted to watch it with me.  He expressed no interest, so I rewatched it alone last night.

It Follows has changed the horror scope a bit, and I've heard it referenced as one of the early films that brought on the phase we're in now, which is being commonly accepted as "elevated horror".  This, The Purge, and some others came out, and began a trend which led to Ari Aster and Jordan Peele and few other people, but mainly it seems A24, which is doing a bizarre mix of elevated horror and total shit such as the new Halloween films

It Follows was recommended to me by my wife's coworker, and I remember watching this for the first time in 2015 or 2016 with my wife of the time, saying yeah, sure, that was good.  I get it.  

Then, I promptly forgot about it and didn't give it much mind until the last few months when whatever I was listening to mentioned it.  Now, elevated horror is fine, and I am welcoming it bringing horror into a more mainstream audience sight, but also it's return to slow burn, more psychological and character based horror ideas.  I am not going to trash it, I think it's fine.  Is It Follows elevated?

Yeah, I would say so.  The story is more character focused, following one heroine and delving into her life and character.  It is slow burn, with very few jump scares, and rather having the emphasis be on trope-averting scares, but still some cool genuinely creepy stuff.  

Plotwise, the idea is that our young heroine has sex with a new guy, he ties her up, and warns her that he didn't mean to hurt her, but there is a awful thing he gave her.  There's these creepy people that are coming for you.  Only you can see them.  If they get you, they'll kill you.  And the only thing it seems to be done about this is to have sex with someone else, which passes the curse (or the STD, basically).  

Like I said there's some good stuff in here, some cool moments and tense build.  The main character manages to show proof of what's happening to her to a small group of friends and they try to fight back or evade the curse.  The "followers" after her are a cool, threatening, but subdued idea.  They're all played the right way, and I'm frankly surprised there wasn't a sequel to this in a way.  It would be very easy to redo this.

I'll give it a 4, I think it's a fun new idea, original, and well executed.