REVIEW: IT FOLLOWS Isn't Exactly The "IT" Thing.

II've seen a many horror movies. It is my favorite genre. Probably because, as I have noted in the past, it is the most challenging to get right. It Follows proves just how challenging that journey into horror film-making can be.

Starting off with a quiet bang, a teenage girl in bright red hooker heels (something I yearned to be a continuous satirical move from the director) darts out of a suburban brick home and into the streets. We get the sense something is in fact following her as she peers back in question--"Did I just see that?" A stunning shot later reveals her brutally mangled body on the beach sand. In fact most of the shots by director David Robert Mitchell are just that--stunning. His talent for mood and atmosphere truly are a stand-out. Small details like never showing the depressed mothers face give us background detail of the heroines life without overplaying it. But this is not necessarily a good thing because it truly outshines the story as it moves from intriguing location to location with little explanation.

The clever story manifests in an unexplained entity passing from one person to the next via fornication. We follow the beautiful Maika Monroe in a brilliant scream queen performance as the "It" is passed to her in a tense scene where she is locked into a wheelchair in a dilapidated structure. Through-out the movie she struggles with the decision of which beau to pass it to (one of which is short-lived great United States Of Tara's Keir Gilchrist--who is excellent here as well). We then follow a group of close friends who experience her mental breakdown as they try to "Final Destination-esque" rid her of the It. I don't know about you but as wonderful as my close-knit friends are... I am pretty sure they would not be willing to chance their life by allowing me to pass the spectre to them. And so goes the first thing in horror that is a tedious threat--the suspension of disbelief.

As cool as that premise sounds, It Follows grows increasingly hard to believe the outlandishness of the plot. In question are also some of the "It's"(the first being the most frightening--an old woman in a nursing home gown), as they appear in different forms--including her friends. What could have been a tie-in of drama greatness--questioning who is who? is tragically abandoned. The suspense is perfectly jarred by Disasterpeace (owing more than a bit to John Carpenter's classic score in Halloween) but the director Mitchell doesn't build pace correctly and several tense moments fall flat like a swimming pool scene of electrical devices waiting at the side are left up to our own imagination to generate the fright factor--we can only visually connect with what's going on.

Not to down It Follows entirely, which will surely gain an extreme cult following over the years are rightly so for its House of the Devil feel (a far better fright-film--check it out) for recreation of bygone horror films from the 1970's and 1980's--when horror truly reined. I guess there are just a few of us out there that get it. We yearn for the days when fun cardboard horror flicks could become classics again. I admire these directors like Mitchell and Ti West (House of the Devil) for not giving up on a genre that leaves us wondering--when is the next big cult classic? As much as I wanted it to be,  It Follows isn't exactly it. It is neither satire like Scream and barely leaves room for philosophical interpretation.

GRADE: B-