Despite the title of this blog post I'm not about to attempt to tear it a new one, it wasn't THAT bad. The acting is fine, the cinematography is really nice and there's a handful of pretty effective scenes and touches that stop it from being a stinker but overall the whole thing is just kind of silly
The premise to the film is that there is a person who is being followed by some kind of thing in human form that is invisible to everyone except the person who is the current target and previous targets. If you are the target, the only way to get the creature off you is to have sex with another person, where the curse is then sexually transmitted to the person that you had sex with and then they must pass it on to someone else. However, if the person you had sex with is killed, then the thing starts going back up the line so, for example, if I was the creatures current target and then I have sex with you, the reader, and then the monster kills you it will then come right after me again. This isn't a Ring style situation where you can just have someone watch the tape and then be rid of it, you'll always be sort of concerned that your turn is coming.
The idea of a slow yet tireless thing that will follow you for all of time is a decent premise despite the whole "sexually transmitted" part being a bit daft and the scene at the very start of the film is extremely good in giving you an idea of whats going on while still leaving a bit of mystery. It's after that scene though where the whole thing starts to fall apart a little.
See, the thing in It Follows is a real thing that exists in the world its inhabiting. It's not a ghost than can walk through walls, its got maybe some slightly higher than average strength but for the most part its similar to a human and while its invisible to everyone except the victim, other people can interact with it and you can even make it partially visible by throwing a sheet on it. Also you seemingly can't kill it but you can stun it for a small amount of time but shooting it in the head or using some other means.
Now that I've explained all that, the reason I think this movie is quite silly is that despite all of this being figured out by a group of about 5 people, they spend the entire movie making absolutely braindead decisions and putting themselves in danger for pretty much no reason. Anyone watching the movie could figure out that the trick to stopping it would be to simply trap it in something. The main character in a scene about half way through the film stuns it by blasting it in the head and on multiple occasions she also sees it being blocked by doors and walls and yet, despite this, the idea to lock it inside a place NEVER CROSSES HER MIND. Instead she goes for some absolutely batshit insane plan where they try and electrocute it inside a swimming pool which completely fails and then their plan after that is to just....have sex with hookers?
A long time ago I watched an anime that I quite enjoyed called Ajin, a series about immortal people getting up to some shenanigans. There's a scene in that show where the army is trying to aprehend an Ajin who's up to no good and they know that while they can't kill him they can stun him, like the thing from It Follows, for a small amount of time by hitting him in the head. So they get the first hit on him and then their plan is nearly successful because they surround the body and have a guy with a rifle putting another bullet between his eyes every couple of seconds as they try to carry him into containment.
The characters in It Follows have a gun, have a means to blast it in the head over and over and could probably quite easily get their hands on some kind of container that they could lob into the ocean and yet it's never done, it's never tried and its never even talked about. They are more than willing to barricade themselves IN to rooms at multiple points but the very basic idea of just trapping the thing is left completely off the table.
The situation in It Follows reminds me of why I had such a problem with other horror movies such as A Quiet Place, where very obvious solutions to an issue seem to be all around around them but because they are "horror movie characters" they go with the most stupid, nonsensical actions possible so that the film actually has something to work with which in my opinion is just shitty writing. My first thought actually was to just flee to a different country but the film actually establishes that the thing can swim so that obviously goes right out the window but it puts so many solutions so blatently there on the table that the characters not rubbing their brain cells together just takes me out of the film completely.
Like I said, it's not an awful film by any stretch and if you're looking for a competently shot, competently acted movie with some decent scares here and there to maybe have on in the background or watch with friends, It Follows is a good pick for that. Just don't buy into all that hype about it being "striking" or those weirdo critics claiming that its "deep" because the demon is sexually transmitted.
One of the most 6/10 movies I've ever seen
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