It Keeps Following

I just saw It Follows (2015), and I liked it. For most of the running time it was appropriately scary, and this is something that is often rare in horror movies. Proving once again that you don't need big name stars for a horror movie, It Follows is largely stocked with young unknowns, including the lead, Maika Monroe as Jay, a pretty blonde. After having sex with her boyfriend, she learns that she has just been transferred a curse: to be followed around by a nameless thing that takes the form of a single individual following the accursed. The follower may be male or female, young or old, naked or clothed, known to the accursed or not known, and it always walks at a steady pace with its eyes riveted on the accursed. If it catches up with you, it will touch you, and if it does, something bad will happen. I seem to remember playing schoolyard games of tag with this kind of premise--if "it" touches you, you become "it"--but the movie makes it somehow more relentless and awful.

Another thing about the thing: no one but you can see it coming, because to everyone else it's invisible. You can make it visible by covering it with a drape or having it throw a TV set at you, so in that sense it's physical, not spiritual. Supposedly if you have sex with someone, you can transfer the curse to that person, but there are a few codicils to this rule that seem to nullify it.

My biggest problem with It Follows is the ending. I thought the movie was just going into the third act, when suddenly the credits rolled. I like a frisson as much as the next horror fan, but this ending seemed to be more of a copout, setting up the sequel without bothering to tie up the present movie.

Overall, though, It Follows was scary and entertaining. The deformed destructive being (DDB) was at once utterly vague and completely incarnate, easily outrun but somehow always about to reach you.

George Ochoa