It Follows [Blu-ray]

* spoilers *Jay Height is a college student in Michigan. The first date with her new boyfriend Hugh goes well, expect he seems freaked out by a girl he describes but Jay can't see. The second date, they have sex in Hugh's car. Jay feels wonderful about it, but Hugh knocks her out right afterwards. She wakes up still in her underwear tied to a wheelchair with Hugh rambling about someone who will follow her. A nude woman approaches her and Hugh seems satisfied, releasing her from her bonds and unceremoniously dumping her in front of her house. Jay reports the incident and tries to forget about it, but at night, someone breaks into her house, changes form, and chases her. She knows it's something more than the ravings of a madman and resolves to seek him out to get more answers.It Follows is a complex horror film that made a big splash last year when it was released into mainstream theaters. Its strengths are its unique world and the varied subjective meanings of the film. The world it builds is a combination of modern and retro. Brand new cars are seen everywhere, but Jay's friend Greg drives an 80's style station wagon that they drive around for most of the film. Jay's house seems stuck in the 70's with its dated style, old horror and sci-fi TV shows and movies on their very old fashioned black and white TV. The synthesized score created by Disasterpeace calls to mind past soundtracks like John Carpenter's Halloween and Charles Bernstein's Nightmare on Elm Street. All of this coupled with the artfully filmed Detroit backdrop makes for a film that creates its own time, similar to the Bates Motel television show.Many people have speculated at the meaning of the film and the Follower. The ones that dismiss it as the fear of sex or sexually transmitted diseases is simplistic and not looking at the whole picture. I think it's much more than that. Jay is 19 years old, not a high school student. She would be at least a few years younger and a virgin if it had been merely about fear in and punishment of having sex. Jay was building a relationship with Hugh (which wasn't even his real name). They got to know each other over a couple of dates and she chose to be intimate with him on their second date. Immediately afterwards, he assaults her, ties her to a wheelchair still in her underwear, and tells her about the Follower, a person who will slowly walk towards her in the guise of anyone. He tells her it isn't stupid and it will keep following forever unless she passes it on to someone else in the same way it passed it to her.I interpret the Follower to be all of the consequences of sex. On the surface, it's pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, but it's also other people's opinions and judgments. It's trusting that the other person is genuine in their intentions and being as close to them as you can possibly be. It's accepting that entering a long term relationship with someone is also assuming all of their baggage as well. The Follower takes many forms as the consequences do. Sometimes it takes on the form of loved ones because the closest people to you have the ability to hurt you the most. Jay is affected by the consequences more seriously than others because they tend to be more serious for women in our society. A woman's value is still tied to her sex life and public opinion about it whether perception matches her actions or not. Men don't have these same perceptions to combat. This is why "Hugh" has to build part of a relationship with Jay to have sex with her while Jay can just hop on a boat and presumably have sex with little to no speaking. Even when Greg is very flippant about the consequences, the Follower still kills him as it also presumably kills the men on the boat. The Follower is always there and always advancing to show that no one is exempt from these consequences.Throughout the film, characters reminisce over being a child. During the game they play at the theater, "Hugh" wants to be a little boy with a whole future ahead of him. Paul, Jay's friend, reminisces over sexual exploration in his childhood. This particular incident is when he and Jay found porn magazines in the street and looked at them only to be caught by their horrified parents. They are remembering when they didn't have to deal with more than disappointed or freaked out parents. Now, their parents are absent because they are growing up. Their parents have other stuff to deal with and honestly can't really help them with these issues. Their parents can't change all of these consequences they are subject to. Paul also reminisces over first kisses that didn't really mean anything to him as a child, but he's obviously in love with Jay now. The same kisses mean something a lot different as adults. Growing up is a bit part of the film. All the main characters are college aged and they need to navigate their new found adulthood on their own.Many complain that the Follower and its rules are inconsistent. At the beginning, a young woman is running away from it, but gives up and sits by the beach. She is found with her leg grotesquely bent backwards, almost severed from her body. Later on, it kills Greg in an entirely different, bloodless fashion. Tons of things are passed around by word of mouth with varying degrees of accuracy. For instance, even as adults, myths abound about pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases abound. Misinformation is everywhere, so of course not all the information being passed to Jay by "Hugh" is not going to be completely accurate. He is reporting his own findings based on his experience. The consequences of sex are different for each person, so why would they be the same in the form of the Follower?The ending of the film has Jay and her friends trying to kill the Follower by luring it into a pool and electrocuting it. It of course doesn't go to well as the Follower isn't stupid. It appears to be dead as the pool fills with blood after Paul shoots it. Jay and Paul have sex and are seen walking down the street hand in hand, implying a new relationship. Someone follows them from behind, but they don't even look back. If you're obsessed with all these negative consequences, it's consumes your life. Jay wouldn't even leave the house and couldn't lead a normal life when she was obsessed with it. Now, she has someone by her side that makes the consequences matter less. The Follower and what it represents are still there and will always be there, but for now, it doesn't matter. It doesn't bode well that Paul was obviously in love with her for a while and Jay was resistant to a relationship, but the last impression we are left with is happiness.It Follows is an interesting horror film that's completely open to interpretation. If you have a different take, I would love to hear it. The filmmakers purposefully didn't give an definitive answers because they want it left that way and I appreciate that. It Follows is largely successful because of Maika Monroe as Jay. Her emotion onscreen is amazing and she kept me on her side the whole film, even when doing morally questionable things to stave off death. I highly recommend It Follows, but it's not for everyone.

It Follows, in addition to stabbing that popular "sexually active teens will die" horror trope in the back and twisting the knife, takes itself seriously and -- dare I say it? -- produces a taut, compact, and artful horror movie. Finally! a real horror movie that relies on suspense, fear, and psychological horror, not just gore, splatter, torture, and/or cheap shock value. Be still my beating heart.It Follows refuses to move quickly (hey, all those kids with the attention span of a gnat who fell asleep in the first 20 minutes? yeah, this wasn't made for them. at all. thank GOD.). The camera work is positively contemplative in places, but it is the frightening contemplation of the danger and horror following the protagonist, so the audience is looking over the protagonist's shoulder even when she herself isn't actually doing so. Maybe more.So what I love most about this movie is probably what others disliked most: it is not all whiz-bang millesecond-shot superfast edits and extreme close-ups. I don't think there was a single rack focus, either, something which used to be very noir, if somewhat melodramatic, until it became insanely overused. Using wide shots with deep focus forces the audience to pay attention, to look for the anomalous (or not so anomalous) in the background while in the foreground the protagonist and friends pause, regroup, discuss, plan.If you're not paying close attention -- if it telegraphed the fright with rack focus -- I don't think you'd be as effectively scared. But I think what I love best about It Follows -- aside from the text and the subtext -- is that the camera work and editing harken back to both the first truly scary and horrifying horror movie (well, scifi/horror movie) that I ever saw, and the next one that truly terrified me (after watching countless trashy horror movies in between): Alien, and The Shining.Yeah, yeah. I know both Alien and The Shining are 40+ years old. Still, I defy you to watch either of them on a big screen in a real movie theater, at some revival or anniversary screening, and NOT be scared shizzleless. The slow dollies, pans, trucking through tight as well as open spaces where the horror -- which you don't even get a good look at, mostly -- might be hiding, just ratchet up the suspense. And It Follows does the same thing _extremely_ well.I don't think that It Follows intends to be an homage to Alien or The Shining, by any means. And though thematically it calls to mind some of the body horror of David Cronenberg's filmography, It Follows is in it's own unique world. It Follows nevertheless uses the same visual techniques of Alien and to a certain extent The Shining to create a truly scary horror movie with little to no blood and gore. It's NOT a snobby art-house horror film -- it is a very artful horror movie, a crucial difference.As in Alien, It Follows' long takes, slow pans, deep focus shots, the trucking shots -- especially in the different spaces, from wide open in parks, wilderness, beaches, pools, to enclosed in school halls, claustrophobic suburban homes, in abandoned urban homes -- they remind me very much of Alien, as does the simplified sound track. Visual space and silence can be very, almost unbearably, suspenseful, if used correctly -- and It Follows, like Alien, uses both very effectively.The other movie that It Follows reminded me of in certain aspects is John Carpenter's remake of The Thing. Since the psychological aspects of the horror in It Follows could be revealed in spoiler-y ways if I described its similarities to Carpenter's The Thing, I won't detail them here.If you need whizbang fast camera moves and edits, melodramatic or over-the-top acting, torture stuff like the Saw movies, and/or stupid overusued horror tropes, then It Follows is not your horror movie.But if you have despaired over the last couple decades of horror movies, wondering if truly scary horror films will ever be made again -- you should give It Follows a shot. The text of the film sounds trope-y, but there is an ethical heart beating in the subtext that becomes the textual conflict in a way I don't think I've seen in a horror movie before.And if you find movies like the original Alien and The Thing remake to be scarier than any amount of monsters, blood and/or gore (The Shining notwithstanding), you have a very good chance of getting wrapped up in It Follows and experiencing suspenseful psychological horror that is seldom seen these days.Okay, I'm going to go watch It Follows again. Because I bought it. Because I just know there will be things I notice on subsequent viewings that I didn't catch the first time I watched it. And, to me, that's the best kind of horror movie of all.

In recent years I have been watching videos on youtube with various top ten style movies or movie moments etc, and quite often they throw up obscure movies I have never heard of, and as long as I like the sound of the concept and can be gotten cheap, I give them a try. This was one such movie. I liked the idea behind this movie but sadly the execution was weak.For starters, how the hell did the first guy find out about how this curse works? It is never explained.Other things that made no sense is why did she have sex while in hospital with someone who did not even believe anything about it, and the just essentially leave him to his own fate?And why, if we already learned that the entity could survive being shot, did they think electricuting in a pool would work?The acting overall was pretty damn poor as well.Not the worst movie ever, but damn they wasted a cool concept with a poorly written, poorly acted movie.

Relentlessly foreboding, and the soundtrack is the icing on the cake. This takes a relatively simple concept originally introduced by Alfred Hitchcock (the invasion of personal safety), and paces is application brilliantly layer by layer. With some great camera shots, some cleverly imply upcoming revelations. This one gets under your skin.One to watch if you love the Birds, Psycho, Twin Peaks, the Conjuring, Insidious, the Exorcist, IT and Stranger Things.

Basically a teenage fright movie, this has elements for everybody. The young cast play out very well, convincingly for the horror that befalls them. Saw this once on TV and simply had to have it for my collection. A modern classic in the making.

Great idea for a film. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Good picture quality and sound. It does come with the following special features: interview with the composer, audio commentary, theatrical trailer, gallery and alternative artwork on sleeve reverse.

Very frustrating movie it got so hilarious silly 😜 a woman is stalked by a old woman half nude btw with left nipple outWell why can't this poor lady go to the police 👮 etc like any worthy person would do buy at your disposal