I was utterly underwhelmed by It Follows (2014), from the first scene to the last. The movie as a whole is inconsistent, and the premise, though intriguing, lacks the development to raise the film out of the “problematic” territory.
Let’s start with the opening. A young girl, Annie, is escaping some danger . . . in high heels. Although we don’t know what she sees, we can assume that it’s getting closer when Annie starts running . . . in her heels . . . on grass. I may have forgiven this illogical action and chalked it up to a director with limited, if any, experience walking in heels, had the following actions been better thought-out. Alas, it was not to be. Annie drives to the beach and calls her parents to tell them she loves them. Was she driving with the shoes on? Most heel-wearers, even teenagers, know that heels are not the best footwear for pressing the gas and braking. Maybe Annie took off the shoes in the car, right? Well, if that was the case, why the hell would she put them on again for the sand? Uneven surfaces are not conducive to walking in stilettos. Even walking barefoot on sand provides plenty of resistance, so I can only imagine the struggle of doing so in a state of high anxiety and a pair of heels. Plus, her feet were probably killing her faster than the unseen pursuer after all that time. At least we get one good shot the next morning. Unfortunately, that shot is also the highlight of the film.
Much of my confusion came from the lack of grounding. When does the movie take place? We see corded landline phones, one cell phone, several not-flat screen televisions playing cheesy, black and white sci-fi flicks, a movie theater seemingly screening only one movie (1963’s Charade), boxy car designs from decades past, contemporary fashion choices, and a bizarre clamshell e-reader. Does It Follows exist outside of our timeline? Is everyone in this suburban town reluctant to keep up with the technology of the time, whenever that may be?
Then we have a score reminiscent of the 1980s. I keenly felt the influence of ‘80s slashers, what with the teenagers having sex and being in danger and the lack of parents, not to mention the other odes to classic teen screams. The absence of parents led to more confusion on my part. First, Jeff’s real identity is found out to be a high school student, not a 21-year-old man, and most of the friends don’t look much older. Jeff apparently rented a crappy apartment in the city, but how could he have done so with a teenager’s budget? Perhaps he hacked his parents’ bank accounts or ransacked their wallets. But such actions aren’t even intimated. Second, our protagonist Jay says, “We slept together in high school,” which would indicate that at least she and Greg (the other member of the “we”) had graduated. I had a hard time believing Jay was a high schooler to start with, so this seemingly throwaway line didn’t help. The poorly calculated details reminded me once again of ‘80s flicks, in which the scares mattered more than the plot.
I also want to talk about the clamshell e-reader. Olivia Luccardi’s character Yara is connected to this weird e-reader like many people are to their smartphones. She is reading Dostoevsky’s The Idiot on it. There must be a reason why writer and director David Robert Mitchell chose that one, especially considering that Yara reads aloud from the text. However, I don’t quite know what that reason is. The Idiot centers on a good person caught in a web of deceit and corruption. Meanwhile, I didn’t find any characters to sympathize with in It Follows, and the web of deceit and corruption was mostly a string of sex-shaming evil. A T.S. Eliot poem is also narrated in the film. Don’t ask me why there are literary references. I just can’t parse them.
Lastly, let’s discuss the premise. A sexually-transmitted demon of sorts, or an STD, if you will, is killing people who don’t spread it. What I glean from this is: stay chaste and you’ll survive. Have sex once, and you’re doomed to a life of promiscuity. The concept obviously mandates sex scenes, which are fine in moderation, but which are also complicated by showing so much . . . grinding between potentially underage people. Keep in mind that they may very well be in high school. I know that none of the actors are actually teenagers, but adults acting as teenagers having sex is shady territory.
I expected more nuance, aesthetic, and plot from this well-acclaimed movie. In short, I expected more from It Follows. It’s possible, of course, that I’m looking into it too much, but there were just too many details I didn’t like for me to ignore. I can love bad movies, big- or low-budget. This one simply wasn’t for me.