It Follows: David Robert Mitchell

I finally, finally, finally saw David Robert Mitchell's It Follows. It's a fascinating blend of 50s teen monster movies à la The Blob (1958) and The Great Gila Monster (1959), 70s slashers, and, bizarrely, coke-slathered 80s techno-sludge. An unusual mish-mash of aesthetics that somehow works! Mostly. As with so, so many 00s and 10s horror films, it constructs rules and lore surrounding the supernatural which it scrupulously follows to the letter until the third act climax where the rule-book gets thrown out the window so the heroes can brute force the big bad out of their lives. It pissed me off when Gore Verbinski did it with The Ring (2002), it pissed me off when the Final Destination movies did it, it pissed me off whenever the Saw movies ignored the point of Jigsaw's games so it could indulge in more death scenes, and it pissed me off here. If anything, it served to help me appreciate how much more of a masterpiece Jennifer Kent's The Babadook--released the same year--was. It created rules and stuck to them, right down to its inevitable and controversial conclusion. Still, it's a welcome piece of pop-horror. Legitimately amazed it hasn't become a franchise.

Rating: 8/10