Like many people around Halloween, I decided to watch a horror movie to commemorate the event.
Directed by David Robert Mitchell, It Follows centres around a carefree teenager named Jay who has contracted a curse from her boyfriend Hugh that transmits itself through sexual intercourse.
The curse itself is essentially “death,” but it’s personified as either a friend or a stranger that follows the main character around. Essentially, it is literally death creeping up slowly.
Once Jay becomes progressively more tortured by this curse, a group of her friends try to help her rid herself of the curse before it gets close enough to Jay that it kills her.
Having a score of 96 per cent on rotten tomatoes, and a 6.9 on IMDb, this movie has mixed reviews, and I can see why.
First of all, the acting itself isn’t stellar. That, combined with the premise about a personified concept slowing following the main character can dissuade a lot of people, and can be passed off as hokey pretty quickly.
The age of all the actors in the movie give the feel of a student film, and I mean that both positively and negatively. Like I said before, the acting isn’t great, and there are a few scenes in the movie that demonstrated that these guys were clearly operating under a budget, but it also creates this charming aura surrounding the film.
The premise of this movie has tons of potential, but it frustrated me because it makes me wonder how good it really could have been if they had more money to spend.
The film itself is set in Detroit, and their ability to capture the city is probably one of the best parts of the film.
The movie gives off this vibe that it’s supposed to be set in the late 70’s or early 80’s, and the city of Detroit offers up the perfect setting for this.
While the majority of the film is set in a nestled neighbourhood just outside of Detroit, the final showdown between Jay and the monster takes place on the other side of the 8 mile tracks, capturing both the Michigan suburbia and the crumbling infrastructure of inner city Detroit really well.
If you appreciate how a movie is filmed, I can tell you that a lot of the scenes have the aesthetics of a Wes Anderson film, without the pretentiousness some people don’t like. Overall, this is definitely worth a watch.
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