March 19--A film of slow builds and medium-grade payoffs, "It Follows" imagines a curse represented by a shape-shifting apparition that might be as ordinary-looking as the boy next door. The curse is transmittable only by intercourse, and the infected rid themselves of the deadly phantom by hooking up with someone else.
No sex is safe in writer-director David Robert Mitchell's suburban Detroit horror story. It's set more or less in the present, though the vibe of this curious picture owes a lot to the paranoiac cinematic nightmares of the 1960s, '70s and early '80s, from Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" ("It Follows" star Maika Monroe has Catherine Deneuve "Repulsion" hair) to John Carpenter's "Halloween" (the musical score by Disasterpeace is a synth-heavy homage).
At the Cannes Film Festival last year, Mitchell's picture grabbed a lot of coverage, more so than his lovely, hazy debut feature "The Myth of the American Sleepover" did four years earlier. I've seen "It Follows" twice, the second time to figure out why I didn't get a little more out of it the first time -- and to understand why a movie operating on such a sharp premise feels slightly flat.
And yet, I have reservations about my reservations. Mitchell takes his time with his characters; he's observant. The effective material in "It Follows" pays careful attention to the little crushes and big risks guiding, and then haunting, the people in the story.
The first scene, executed in a single shot, goofs dryly on a million other females-in-distress prologues. A young woman wearing underwear and crimson high heels staggers out of a house, apparently being pursued. Then, we meet the central figures, chiefly Jay, played with casual authority by Monroe. She is 19 and interested in Hugh (Jake Weary), who's a little older. A back-seat tryst, Jay's first sexual experience, turns, well, to terror; afterward, Hugh delivers the news that Jay will now be followed by the phantom. And there's only one way to shake it.
Our heroine's perplexed friends include Greg (Daniel Vovatto), whose family beach house provides a key setting. Younger, yearning Paul (Keir Gilchrist, the movie's quiet secret weapon) has had a yen for Jay for years. Will circumstances bring these two together, even if it means sharing a specter among friends?
Photographed in supple tones by Michael Gioulakis, Mitchell's film favors slow zooms and pullbacks. Still, you keep waiting for the story to take off and really rattle your sense of comfort. "It Follows" may have too much tact for this genre, and I wonder if it would've been more frightening had Mitchell confined the phantoms to the audience's imagination. As is, the conventional scare sequences are dutiful at best, and the swimming pool climax is hobbled by special effects that needn't have looked quite so cheesy.
More compelling are the scenes in which nothing much happens except Monroe, Gilchrist and their cohorts wandering the decrepit streets of a city that looks as if the people have moved on for good. The limitations of Mitchell's sophomore feature have little to do with money. What's right with Mitchell relates to his skill with actors, and a way with easygoing unease, if you buy that paradox. Many people are crazy for this movie; check it out, just to see where you land -- up, down or, as I did, in the middle.
Then see "The Myth of the American Sleepover." That's the one pointing to a career worth following.
"It Follows" -- 2.5 stars
MPAA rating: R (for disturbing violent and sexual content including graphic nudity, and language)
Running time: 1:40
Opens: Friday at AMC River East 21, Music Box Theatre and Century Evanston 12/CineArts 6
mjphillips@tribpub.com
