Last night’s terrific recent horror movie on Netflix Disk: IT FOLLOWS (2015), one of a flurry of recent horror indies that astonishes by being original, human, and wholly persuasive within its universe. Posits a demon — or *something*; that word is never used — that is passed from person to person by sexual contact. If you are the most recent afflicted person, the creature will stalk you in the guise of a human being, never moving faster than a slow walk. Only you can see it, but it can attack anybody who tries to help you. Because it can change its appearance (though its usually creepy), you cannot recognize it on sight; any slow-moving person is suspect. When it reaches you it will beat you to death.
Protagonist: a college-age girl who makes love to a boy she’s sweet on only to find out that he’s passed on the infection. He proves its existence to her, warns her that she needs to pass it on as quickly as possible, tells her that if whoever she passes it on to dies it will work its way back to her, and so on.
Three things distinguish this film. First, unlike many horror films where the real-life aspects are neglected, this girl’s life and her circle of friends feel genuine; they are not “types,” and are well-characterized both before and after the menace turns up. Second, this film completely subverts the slow-walking stalker trope; yes, it is very possible to outrun it, or to get in a car and drive like hell, but it also never stops, and distances offer only minimal protection, and the constant terror and uncertainty will wear you down.
Third, and I appreciated this most, our heroine’s friends are skeptical but persuaded that she’s telling the truth the instant undeniable physical evidence establishes that *some* invisible being is coming after her. There are several small-scale set pieces throughout, involving the confrontations, and they’re all well-done, but EVEN BETTER is the portrait of what this does to her psychologically, while they’re waiting for its next attack. It’s a story that works despite its silly premise because it is told with absolute conviction.
This has been an astonishing couple of years for small horror films; we sometimes go years without a halfway decent once, and just recently we have had IT FOLLOWS, HOUSEBOUND, HONEYMOON, THE BABADOOK, PROXY a bunch of others, all told with cleverness and economy, all about more than just getting us to the next fright scene. Who woulda thunk that these movies would possibly evolve in the direction of getting smarter, to combat the trend toward idiocy in movies with budgets?
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