It Follows (You)

           It Follows is a movie that understands the importance of tension in a good horror film. It’s also a horror movie with a soundtrack so unnerving that it’s frightening to listen to all on its own without the visual context provided by the movie. Disasterpeace’s score is an at times disjointed symphony of discordant noise that builds and ebbs with the action on screen, baiting listeners with periods of quiet that only make you anticipate (and fear) the next jump. Never have I encountered music that so perfectly mirrors the rhythm of a horror film. Like It Follows itself, the soundtrack teases you. Although neither resorts to jump scares often, they both take advantage of the fact that we’re a culture accustomed to them, and they constantly trick you into waiting for a bang that doesn’t come. If there’s going to be a next period in horror, this may very well be it. Jump scares have become so prevalent that a post-jump scare horror culture has to monopolize on it to create new levels of uncertainty and tension without becoming exploitative. Like The Babadook, It Follows is a horror film from which other horror films could learn a thing or two—and not just about how to ration and effectively using jump scares, but also how to use space.

            Horror movies depend upon effectively controlling space. Deliberately restricting the viewpoint of the audience by blocking off areas to the back or side of a character in an uncertain situation, using their body or a door or other obstruction, is old hat by now. We know that we’re being purposefully toyed with and forced to anticipate both what occupies the hidden space and the exact moment that it will be revealed to us (and in what manner and with what aural stinger). The found footage sub-genre of horror that has thoroughly saturated the market at this point is a prime example of space control. It not only forces the viewer into a closer relationship with the events they’re witnessing through a first person perspective but also puts blinders on them and deprives them of the real world “sixth sense” and peripheral vision that would make sensing danger easier. Instead, their senses are restricted only to the visual and the auditory, and the space they can perceive is incredibly limited.

            Restrictive close-ups of faces, frenzied camera jiggling, and quick cuts are all ways that horror movies toy with space and force the viewer into a position of uncertainty; however, David Robert Mitchell makes the wise decision in It Follows to break free from the obvious claustrophobia of close quarters and to instead use more wide angle shots. The old standbys are still present, but It Follows makes good use of the larger world to create more complex spaces that still feel dangerous. There are multiple scenes that focus on the decrepitude of a Detroit neighborhood, for example. By breaking out into a larger world, Mitchell only increases the tension for the viewer because of the nature of the beast at the heart of It Follows. The titular “it” could be anywhere at any given time and could look like anyone. By giving the viewer more space to observe the action, the film also exposes them more thoroughly. Rather than immediately knowing that the threat is behind the characters or off to the side behind a convenient door, the audience is forced to search for and attempt to identify the monster in crowds or in wooded areas. It’s a twisted game of “Where’s Waldo?” that only gets more fiendish when the film switches perspectives to a character that cannot actually see the thing at all. Sometimes it’s easy to identify the antagonist because of its form or because a shot is designed to highlight its presence, but the use of wide open spaces still works effectively as a scare tactic because even if we can’t immediately see the creature, we anticipate its return, and it could be lurking anywhere in the fore-, middle-, or background of any of It Follows’ wider, more open spaces.

            That It Follows is meant to be macabre game of sorts for viewers makes sense given the way that the rules are so handily dispensed by the protagonist Jay’s “boyfriend” Hugh/Jeff, who tells us everything we ever learn about the monster/creature/thing at two points during the film. It’s very convenient and perhaps a bit heavy-handed, but plenty is still left unsaid about the actual nature of the beast. Also, I just so happen to find the rules by which the creature plays spine-tinglingly excellent. Rather than appearing from thin air to shock us repeatedly, the monster has to walk to get to its victims; however, it is always walking straight for them, and it is constantly aware of where they are. It doesn’t speak or rest, and apart from one startling scream during an encounter in a boat house, it never communicates in any way apart from knocking on doors and moving ever closer to its target.

            We learn these facts about the creature early on, and as I previously suggested, it serves the important purpose of making the audience constantly look out for it. Although it can jump out at people, it’s far more common to see it approaching first, and the fear the monster generates has less to do with its appearance than it does with its inexorable nature and the knowledge that if you aren’t seeing it, it’s either en route to you or somewhere you haven’t looked yet. At one point, Jay and friends pull out of her driveway in the car, and as they’re driving away we see a naked man standing on the roof watching them. The implication, of course, is that “it” was literally right on top of them for some time before they left. The viewer must then re-contextualize the previous scenes with the new knowledge that the creature was there all along.

            Moments like this one that force audiences to imagine what they cannot see or are not shown employ what the Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe termed “terror”—a concept apart and different from horror. In her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” Radcliffe distinguishes between terror and horror thusly: “Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a higher degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them . . . and where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in . . . uncertainty and obscurity.”[1] Terror, Radcliffe argues, forces the reader (or viewer) to exercise his or her imagination. In this regard, uncertainty or obscurity can be used to more effectively frighten people by making them fill in the gaps themselves. Conversely, horror is simply showing someone something horrific outright. It’s shocking, but “in real life . . . to ascertain the object of our terror, is frequently to acquire the means of escaping it.”[2] In essence, a sense of horror is a fleeting thing. It causes a shock, but once it has revealed itself, it’s often possible to escape from it. Literally, you could say that seeing the monster’s location makes it easier to evade (in some cases). Metaphorically, however, escape comes in the form of a release from tension. Fear is more lasting, then, if people are forced to consider uncertain or obscure elements because without a definitive answer they must turn to their imaginations and a myriad possibilities that are likely more frightening than anything the writer or filmmaker could come up with.

            A good scary movie, in my opinion, uses both terror and horror throughout. They can both be frightening when properly employed, but the use of horror can also turn an otherwise good movie on its head. I usually offer up The Conjuring as an example here. The largely unseen entity is well used for the first two acts of the movie, but when it becomes embodied exclusively in the third and the film devolves into a laughably typical exorcism plot I stopped being afraid and started laughing. The distinction between terror and horror is an imperfect one, though, and while Radcliffe was arguing for the superiority of terror, I believe both have their place. It’s difficult to say what “ratio” of the two is appropriate in general, but I think It Follows specifically does a good job balancing the two. It begins with a tense scene of uncertainty where a girl flees an unknown threat (terror as we struggle to understand what’s going on), then offers up the sight of her mutilated body on the beach (horror as we behold the gore) before settling into a lengthy build-up focused on the protagonist Jay, her friends, and her relationship with Hugh/Jeff (terror as we wait to find out how this story connects to what we’ve already seen).

            Wisely, It Follows ends with terror rather than horror by leaving the fate of the monster uncertain, much of its nature completely undisclosed, and the day-to-day happiness of Jay and Paul in question. Rather than ending with a cheap bang (I’m looking at you, Sinister), It Follows concludes with more uncertainty. The out of focus figure walking behind Jay and Paul might be an ordinary pedestrian, or it might be something else. The screen then cuts to black and to the title “It Follows,” which could be read as an answer to the question of the creature’s survival but also serves as a reminder to the audience—It’s still out there (maybe), we still don’t know what it is or whether it can be killed, and you might very well be next. Rather than granting the audience release, It Follows only offers more tension. It’s a quiet but menacing farewell that wants the audience to stay engaged and to keep imagining as they exit the theater. There’s even a scene in the movie where Jay and Hugh/Jeff go to the movies and encounter “it.” It makes you want to look around at the other people with you there in the dark. It makes you only want to open your door to a knock if it’s accompanied by a familiar voice, and even then you still might find an unwelcome guest crowding into the room behind your pal.

            By all accounts, Mitchell is well aware of the importance of uncertainty to the film. In an interview, he says, “I’m not personally that interested in where ‘it’ comes from. To me, it’s dream logic in the sense that they’re in a nightmare, and when you’re in a nightmare there’s no solving the nightmare. Even if you try to solve it.”[3] Apparently there are rumors of a sequel exploring the origin of “it,” and I cringe at the thought because I know that they’ll inevitably go to the well of demons and spirits that Hollywood keeps dredging from and offer a disappointing, canonical (definitive) answer to a question that doesn’t require one. It puts me in mind of something my Cultural Studies professor once said about the comic book industry—namely that art tends to succeed in spite of the industry rather than because of it. The very notion of “industry,” of course, is industrialized, calling to mind conveyor belt assemblage, mass production, and capitalist money-mindedness. It’s the antithesis of art, and although one can defend the move to capitalize on a profitable idea as logical, it still doesn’t make it right.

            There’s nothing especially frightening about learning that “it” is just another demonic presence lurching after people. What is frightening is a monster that defies explanation. Without an answer from the filmmakers, we can only guess at what “it” is and what “it” means, and we’re likely to continually cycle through the possibilities in a manner that recalls the creature’s own shapeshifting. It’s more threatening this way because its identity is uncertain and because that uncertainty allows it to defy the schema by which we qualify, compartmentalize, and usually put away horrific things. It recalls a Lovecraftian universe in which there are things that simply defy human understanding. Fans of the Hannibal Lecter novels and films were disappointed by the origin story on offer in Hannibal Rising because its explanation of Hannibal reduced his inscrutable quality (his intelligence and his brutality) to something known and trite.

            Not everyone has my imagination, though, and the mixed viewer reviews—with people despising It Follows for not being scary and others giving it more credit than it deserves—suggest that people either really like the focus on uncertainty or feel short-changed by it (and/or the obvious allegory between sexuality, disease, and a monster that cannot be stopped and can only ever be temporarily evaded, surrendered to, or passed along to some new innocent). “Generally speaking,” writes Peter Debruge for Variety, “horror is only as potent as whatever fear it exploits, and ‘It Follows’ relies a bit too heavily on a wobbly venereal-disease allegory.”[4] Arguably It Follows does have other thematic interests, however. Specifically, the film focuses on morality and the fear of death, the latter of which is inevitable and often impossible to recognize in advance. The movie incorporates passages from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and a couple quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Clearly It Follows has aspirations beyond simply invoking the classic horror films of the seventies and eighties with its period piece look, music, and poster design. John Carpenter’s The Thing is a clear inspiration for the creature, but there are also bits of music that sound somewhat familiar. To my ear, there is a little of the Halloween theme in It Follows’ “Detroit,” for example.

It Follows' poster has a certain "retro" quality.[5]

            It Follows might seem to be somewhat hamstrung thematically by associating its monster with sexual disease, but it also feels like an appropriate, self-conscious literalization of a theme that underlies many more traditional slasher movies like Friday the Thirteenth. I wrote the following post on the subject on Tumblr a while back:

“It’s pretty clear that the Friday the 13th films embody the duality of Americans’ fascination/repulsion regarding sexuality–the heavy-breathing voyeurism, on one hand, and the deeply-ingrained puritanical desire to stifle (or shame, etc.) on the other. Viewers are able to enjoy the creepy, peeking camera and then experience the catharsis of seeing Jason murder (in first person, no less) the objects of their misbegotten desire. They are able to project their guilt over their desire (their subconscious sense of their own perversity) onto Jason as he violently annihilates the erotic tableau that has caused them so much confusion. The films are essentially torture porn for the guilty consciousness of a nation that continues to insist ‘she was asking for it’ and to simultaneously emulate (even worship) and vilify the perceived amoral virility of youth culture.”[6]

Horror films have often linked sexuality and the subsequent murder of characters. It Follows might appear to be stating the obvious by making things so explicit, but it feels like a long overdue open acknowledgement of the way that we like to associate youthful promiscuity and experimentation with extermination. While there is some sense that “Mitchell creates a situation where the infected are super-motivated to pass it on,” it also highlights the importance of the disclosure of health issues for prospective sexual partners.[7] Consent requires knowing what you’re getting into, and a reading of It Follows as symbolic of a rampant serial infection like AIDS thanks to unprotected sex (or sex with strangers) works as well. A culture that is complicit with these behaviors is a culture stalked by a monster that could easily come almost anyone’s way.

            Furthermore, although the disease angle is certainly a valid interpretation of the film’s events, the plot also deals with issues of morality. Jay and the other bearers of the curse have a difficult choice to make when faced with the fact that they are marked for death. The seemingly right thing to do is to either try to outrun the monster forever or to surrender to the inevitable and die without passing it on and hurting someone else. Of course, surrendering isn’t necessarily the moral thing to do since your own death only sends the monster to the next person in line. They might be a scumbag who knowingly tricked someone else into taking on the curse, or they could be a complete innocent who didn’t know what they had or what they were doing. By passing the curse on, you can prolong your own life in addition to the lives of those before you in the chain, though you are also likely committing a heinous immoral offense if you trick someone else into taking on the curse. The least selfish action seems to be to run and to keep running as long as possible. You guarantee your own suffering but postpone that of the other folks in line and do not curse others; however, any good you do (even by staying alive as long as possible without further spreading the curse) only postpones rather than eliminates the harm that will eventually come to other people. Again, It Follows refuses to give easy answers, and with the unnamed girl in the opening, Jay, and Hugh/Jeff it offers a poignant depiction of the madness and amorality that come from trying to solve the unsolvable quandary.

            Similarly, It Follows examines the ambiguity of human sexuality and the cultural baggage with which it is saddled. After having sex with Hugh/Jeff, Jay ruminates on her growth from girl into young woman. She talks about her dreams of holding hands and sitting in a car—not to go places necessarily but just to be there—and it all sounds very much like how we tend to paint love, sex, and monogamy in idealistic terms. You could argue that It Follows is an anti-premarital sex PSA that uses the scare tactics of rampant, inescapable, deadly disease and the fact that a single sexual encounter essentially forces Jay into several others to suggest that sex outside of marriage cheapens the experience of relationships with other people. The evidence is all there to back up such a reading, but I think it is ultimately undermined by the aforementioned reflections by Jay herself who, after recalling her childlike interest in relationships, asks Hugh/Jeff (and likely herself), “But where do we go now?”

            These musings are accompanied by shots of Jay toying with a plant growing from the asphalt beside Hugh/Jeff’s parked car. In a sense, the plant symbolizes Jay’s romantic development. Born and raised in soil, she has blossomed to find a world of asphalt and dilapidated buildings. She lives on the edge of Detroit, a city with a sense of rampant decay in the film. Literally, Jay has to wonder where she goes from her comfortable suburb when the world outside it seems to be on the downslope. Symbolically (metaphorically), she has found that the idealism of sex that she grew up with has no foundation in reality. There’s nothing to it really. It is what it is: underwhelming and bereft of arcane meaning. Reality fails to live up to expectation. You could argue that this sense of directionless (“But where do we go now?” From here; from sex) actually reinforces the PSA reading, but at no point does It Follows suggest that waiting or marriage are better answers. Parents are sorely lacking in the film almost to the point of stretching believability, but what parents we do meet are not happily married either. Jay has only her mother, and several shots focus on the father in photographs that is clearly missing from the family’s current living situation. Greg seems to only have a mother as well. Hugh/Jeff also has a single parent. At least, these are the only parents we hear about or see. If It Follows is a critique of premarital sex, then it’s missing half the message. If it’s a critique of the idealization of sex, though, the message comes through loud and clear. Love doesn’t exist. Sex is still a Big Deal in the film because of the monster that comes with it, but the actual act is meaningless.

            It Follows’ plot is almost cruel in its efforts to make Jay see this meaninglessness. She has sex with one man who lies to her about his identity and his reasons for being with her in the first place. She has sex with another man who doesn’t believe that her problems are real to try to solve those problems, and when he dies, she may or may not have had sex with multiple strangers at once to try to save her life. She finds herself increasingly alienated from her romantic notions of love and sex, and when she finally thinks she can find a measure of that old idealism with her longtime friend Paul, she only finds more of the same nothing.

            Paul himself is an insufferable “good guy”—the “friendzoned” gentleman, the pencil-necked “beta male” who deserves the girl but can’t get her because she only likes “jerks.” He’s the worst part of a superficial reading of It Follows because of how he seems to vindicate that sort of “good guy” myth. He eventually gets the girl, after all. And yet, Paul also finds that sex with Jay is not what he thought it would be. Afterward, they ask one another if they feel any different. The obvious implication of this question is that they are trying to determine if the creature is still alive (if Jay now feels less cursed while Paul feels a sense of foreboding); additionally, though, the question is about the sex itself and their relationship. Does Jay feel better now that she’s been with this “good guy” who risked his life to save her? Does Paul feel better now that he’s been with Jay? Neither feels any different. It’s just more sex. We see them holding hands in the final scene of the film, but neither one looks happy. On the one hand, there is still the potential supernatural threat: The camera pans up to the window looking out onto the open expanse of a yard and the concealing foliage at its edge when the two are having sex; the composition of the final shot of the movie emphasizes the space between the two and the out of focus figure following in their wake.

            If not deadly, sex is still instilled with none of the idealistic weight we often attribute it in It Follows. True to itself to the end, the movie refuses to tell us the truth about the monster or its survival, makes us only guess at what transpires between Jay and the men on a boat we see her wade towards in one scene, leaves only a question mark in the wake of another where Paul drives through town past a pair of prostitutes after having sex with the cursed Jay, and ultimately undermines whatever happiness its ending and the relationship it presents with more doubt.

            It is existential dread—the failure of ideals, the death of the promise and blissful ignorance of childhood, and literal death. The “it” in the title of It Follows might just be the monster, or AIDS, or it could suggest that something follows after something else. Disappointment follows sex. Death follows life. It all follows you as long as you’re alive.

Notes:

[1] Radcliffe, Ann. “On the Supernatural in Poetry.” The New Monthly Magazine 7 (1826): 145-52. Print. (Note that this is one possible source for “On the Supernatural in Poetry.” Since I have yet to find a full version myself, I have to rely on indirect quotes from other sources. The quotations featured here are sourced as page six of “On the Supernatural in Poetry” and clearly do not correspond to the version cited above, though obviously they should appear fairly early in it.)

[2] Ibid.

                                                                                 

[3] Rawson-Jones, Ben. “Exploring the Horror of It Follows: David Robert Mitchell Interview.” Digital Spy. Hearst Magazines UK, 8 Mar. 2015. Web. Accessed 31 Jul. 2015. <http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/interviews/a633564/exploring-the-horror-of-it-follows-david-robert-mitchell-interview.html#~pk3JrCZhirHXlr>

[4] Debruge, Peter. “Cannes Film Review: ‘It Follows.’” Variety. Variety Media, 28 May 2014. Web. Accessed 31 Jul. 2015. <http://variety.com/2014/film/festivals/cannes-film-review-it-follows-1201194726/>

[5] Film Fan. “It Follows (poster).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Mar. 2015. Web. Accessed 31 Jul. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Follows>   

[6] MStatoNation. “On the ‘Friday the 13^th’ Series.” The Taco Ranch. Tumblr, 2014. Web. Accessed 31 Jul. 2015. <http://mstatonation.tumblr.com/post/101606971801/on-the-friday-the-13th-series>(Note that I trotted out the concept of “catharsis” here—a notion that an audience’s tension can be released through something like the projection of those tensions onto a safe outlet that dates to Aristotle—however, I no longer necessarily believe that catharsis exists in the sense that it is often used: namely by defenders of violent media as an explanation for how consumption of said media deters violent behavior. Various other theories of social development have roundly disproved catharsis in the arena of practicality as anything more than a theory, but it still gets mentioned a lot. Sometimes by me.)

 

[7] Debruge.