Earlier this year, by hook or by crook (but most likely via Buzzfeed), I heard about It Follows and was immediately intrigued. The reviews I read said that it was a purely psychological movie, unlike so many of the horror movies nowadays that rely on gore-porn or jumps.
Psychological horror is my jam! What more do you need than for someone to plant a seed in your brain? If you have a wild and crazy imagination, it’s easy to let that seed grow all the way into a massive [creepy] tree.
Yesterday as we bumbled around Walmart, I remembered I should buy Straight Outta Compton (yes kids, it’s true: we do not have a Netflix account… we’re not “movie people”). As I locked eyes with the first side of a movie display, there it was: It Follows. For the low price of $9.96, I carried my treasure home and prepared to watch it.
“Can we watch this tonight?” I asked Erik. “I’d rather not sleep tonight than tomorrow when I have to work in the morning.”
Anyway… we watched the movie. About 30-40 minutes in, I declared that I already didn’t like it (by which I mean it was definitely scaring the shit out of me) and looked at the box to see how long my torture would last: a mere 100 minutes.
Photo courtesy of denofgeek.com
The reviews I had previously read were pretty spot on. They said the entire movie had an ominous feel, and it did. The suspense continually mounted, only to have nothing scary happen… yet. The main characters never seemed happy, even before anything happened. And of course, it was set in Detroit. Need I say more about the atmosphere?
So basically, the movie is about a sexually-transmitted… umm… thing. Once you’ve received this thing, It follows you on foot wherever you go. You can buy time by driving away, but It will find you eventually. It looks different every time, but always like some creepy horrible person walking after you. The only way you can get rid of It is by infecting someone else and hoping that person doesn’t die; if the person you infected dies, It comes right back after you again.
Which is why, I suppose, you can’t just infect a hooker and have your problem solved. It appears that if you don’t know about It, you wouldn’t understand something was wrong with the “person” following you until it was too late and you were dead. The main character, Jay, even tries to get rid of the curse by having sex with some boaters, only to find It coming after her yet again. It seems your best chance for survival would be to infect someone you trust so that you can both watch your backs for the rest of your lives.
Of course, in true psychological horror style, there’s no telling what It is, either. The only person who can see It is the infected person (and the person infected before them), which leads to extreme paranoia. So no one else can see It, but It seems to be able to hurt other people regardless. It has a one-track mind and only wants the infected person, but if someone else gets in Its way, It has no trouble pushing them away or hurling something at them. Toward the end of the movie, someone throws a blanket over It: so apparently, It’s invisible but very much real. It can’t go through walls or doors but It can break windows and climb into your house and bang on your bedroom door until you unsuspectingly let It in. *shudder*
Overall, I really liked the movie. I liked it so much that I woke up at 1:19am and decided to sleep on the couch with the lights on, watching Friends. I’ll be watching it again at some point, just to find even more creepy nuances that escaped me the first time.
As I explain again and again to everyone who thinks I’m a freak for loving horror movies, some people get their thrills from amusement parks. I get mine from horror.
The Need to Be Clever 