Fantastic Fest 2014: It Follows

Wearing its influences on its sleeve, It Follows transcends its cinematic pastiche to create a film that is evocative and creepy, with unsettling imagery and frightening atmosphere.

Something is coming for us. It is inevitable, be it disease, disaster, or disillusionment (believe me, that can be a killer). It Follows sets up a narrative where an unstoppable force, in this case an entity that can take any human form, inexorably tracks its victims through sexual intercourse. Once this entity gets you, you’re through, as is potentially everyone back through the chain of liaisons. It’s a great hook – basically an STD come to life – one that writer/director David Robert Mitchell (The Myth of the American Sleepover) fleshes out following Jay (Maika Monroe), her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), and their small group of friends, after Jay contracts the curse via new boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary). That’s about all the plot you’ll get out of this review, as the film works best the less you know going in. Mitchell mixes the mood of early David Cronenberg with the brilliant mise-en-scène that John Carpenter utilized so well in his late Seventies output. It Follows has style to burn, and the cinematography, coupled with a brilliantly nuanced soundtrack keeps ratcheting up the tension in smart and creative ways. It is a mesmerizing film, one you won’t shake very easily.

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It Follows screens again Wednesday, Sept. 24, 11:30pm.