Well, It Follows has gone straight into the top handful in the (short) list of my favourite horror films.[*] Seriously good.
It works through the interplay of several pieces - the ingenuity and metaphorical richness of its central idea, the unnerving way in which the thing that follows is rendered, the out and out scares, the lushly languid rendition of setting and characters (unavoidably bringing to mind The Virgin Suicides for me) including a deliberately ambiguous sense of period, the easy interweaving of the teenage friendship, detective gang and 'getting out of town' elements (Stand By Me seems, if not a direct inspiration, at least a spiritual predecessor), the heighteningly swooning and ominous synth music that scores it (reminded me of the music in Drive), the overall mood.
In all, just very satisfying, and more as cinema qua cinema than particularly as genre.
(on my own, in a cinema 3 at Nova that seemed remarkably full for a small-name film on a Thursday night)
[*] The only others that I can recall thinking were this good are Let The Right One In, The Others and maybe The Orphanage, and also The Descent (the most straightforwardly, leanly terrifying of the lot).
It works through the interplay of several pieces - the ingenuity and metaphorical richness of its central idea, the unnerving way in which the thing that follows is rendered, the out and out scares, the lushly languid rendition of setting and characters (unavoidably bringing to mind The Virgin Suicides for me) including a deliberately ambiguous sense of period, the easy interweaving of the teenage friendship, detective gang and 'getting out of town' elements (Stand By Me seems, if not a direct inspiration, at least a spiritual predecessor), the heighteningly swooning and ominous synth music that scores it (reminded me of the music in Drive), the overall mood.
In all, just very satisfying, and more as cinema qua cinema than particularly as genre.
(on my own, in a cinema 3 at Nova that seemed remarkably full for a small-name film on a Thursday night)
[*] The only others that I can recall thinking were this good are Let The Right One In, The Others and maybe The Orphanage, and also The Descent (the most straightforwardly, leanly terrifying of the lot).
