It Follows

I'm actually somewhat glad I didn't see this in the cinema: figured I'd wait 'til Halloween, that it might be a suitable candidate to enjoy on the night; kinda glad I did as I'm such a wuss with horror films, watching It Follows in the cinema would have probably sent me crawling up the walls.

No doubt, it's a fantastically tense, creepy film that deserves much of the praise given, but I could never shake the feeling that I was watching a homage to those early John Carpenter productions, rather than something unique to David Robert Mitchell: now, to be fair, the nature of the supernatural threat meant Mitchell brilliantly framed his scenes so we were constantly scanning the background for something sinister walking towards us - in many ways that's the simple genius of the film - but I felt that choice resulted in something aesthetically too close to Halloween, with its own careful shots of suburbia that teased us to look for Michael Myers in the bushes. The synth soundtrack by Disasterpeace & the production design also gave the impression of a deliberate homage, with a single smartphone being the only obvious token of modernity in a film full of cathode-ray TVs and wood paneled station-wagons.

Mind you, it's not something many cinema-goers outside of those with an interest in Horror would pick up on, so I wouldn't hang It Follows on the basis of cribbing a little; imitation being the sincerest form of flattery n' all that. It's also refreshing to see that there are still horror films out there that understand the lingering terror is often the build-up and atmosphere, not necessarily the release & jump scare.