Follow Through
It Follows (2014): 7 out of 10: Some movies put me to sleep. Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” is a great example of one where it took a few separate viewing to make it through. It Follows turns out to be another such film.
I don’t know if it is the leisurely pace, the lack of action, or the nebulous antagonist, but it worked like a knockout gas on me. It Follows’s premise is actually quite good. If you sleep with someone, an unstoppable monster will chase you until you sleep with someone else and then they will chase them and so forth.
The solution to such a curse seems fairly straightforward, particularly for an attractive blonde teen girl. Go to a swingers’ club in say Las Vegas. Since the monster moves at a simple walking pace, by the time it reaches Vegas you will have twenty partners at the very least ahead of yourself.
Alas, it wouldn’t be a horror movie if the characters spent five minutes thinking of a logical way out of their predicament. So instead she and her Scooby Gang spend the movie making sure the “monster” can find them.
It Follows has some very effective scenes and set pieces. It is not a bad film at all. The mixing of styles and technology give a dreamy sense out of time. The acting is naturalistic. I think maybe I am just too old for the movie.
For example, one of the main characters is the childhood friend who holds a torch for the protagonist and who has stuck by her side as she has dated others who use her and throw her away while he sits from afar and painfully pines. I am old enough to recognize this as a classic “nice guy”. I am also old enough to understand being with him would be a fate worse than any monster.
Maybe this movie is scarier than I thought.