It Follows

"A must see...nothing short of amazing." Rolling Stone

“The most exciting film in Cannes has landed, like some terrifying spectre on the beach. Despite borrowing cleverly from the best, It Follows still manages to feel like no other example in recent years - tender, remarkably ingenious and scalp-pricklingly scary.

“It begins, in classic fashion, with a teen girl in the suburbs fleeing in utter panic. She's being chased, very slowly, by something no one can see, except for her and others like her – victims of a sexually transmitted hex that’s sent a shape-sifting succubus into their lives.

“The premise sounds pretty hokey. It's not at all. The movie's a brilliantly fresh spin on a classic model – the pass-on-the-curse conceit which horror fans will know. It Follows does its entire lineage proud, not just by switching tacks from runic subterfuge or videotape circulation to the rather Cronenbergy gambit of inflicting a demon on your unfortunate sex partner. It's altogether smart, subtextually fascinating, and more or less a contemporary horror fan's dream come true.

“The genre trappings make it a nifty, commercially tantalising venture for its writer-director, David Robert Mitchell, after his terrific first feature, The Myth of the American Sleepover. He matches that film’s subtle sadness and complete sincerity here, while furthering its already substantial ambition, essentially by dropping a terrifyingly unhurried and many-faced stalker right into the middle of it.

“Giving this revenant, or whatever the hell it is, the Michael-Myers-in-Halloween constriction of only walking at all times constitutes both a neat Carpenter homage and a clammy-palmed atmospheric masterstroke. It’s just one of the rules Mitchell sets himself and sticks to. He never cheats, never stretches the premise for cheap shocks. They’re utterly earned, and had the Cannes critics’ week audience jumping with helpless fright.

“The ‘It’ of It Follows, springs from the same It teenagers are generally craving and constantly thinking about. It’s something nasty in the woodshed. It’s a blind date to make your blood run cold.” -  Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

Part of our Indie Horror series.