It Follows

Deux décennies de mon genre préféré sur une assiette. Une musique intense et des steadycams de rue du matin de Carpenter, parfois étirées jusqu'à la dimension psychédélique du giallo, travaillent ici avec la logique de l'intrigue et le comportement crédible des personnages pour créer une atmosphère mystérieuse de terreur cachée et d'amour moderne dans le film "Le Cercle". De plus, l'horreur est transmise par des relations sexuelles entre des adolescents attrayants, en particulier une jolie blonde fragile, et ce n'est pas un plaisir, mais une souffrance coupable. Ajoutez à cela les sombres endroits vides de sens de Detroit. Un régal pour les connaisseurs du genre, qui aurait pu être l'événement de la décennie si la brillante combinaison des courants historiques avait été couronnée par une esquisse de nouvelle direction visionnaire. (20/04/2015)

(49th KVIFF) I’m very happy after the screening at KVIFF. Seeing a good horror movie on a big screen, in a theatre full of people who, considering the circumnstances (the late hour and the booze), behaved well and weren’t a nuisance is not something you see very often. Objectively, I could complain about it being somewhat repetitive, most of the film consists of either how they try to catch the scary spirit or of how they go from one place to another, but these complaints are very well compensated by a premise that is original and entertaining for the genre, the likeable characters (finally, teenage protagonists in a horror movie that aren’t dull chess pieces, but nice young people, and you don’t want anything bad happening to them) and how effective it is overall – the opening sequence already gave me chills, and that feeling repeated itself during the entire 100 minute run. But what’s most valuable is that most of those scenes take place during the day. The climax at the swimming pool and the scene on the beach are some of the moments I will remember at the end of this film year. I was expecting something dirtier given the theme, and more sexually explicit, but It Follows is very lame in this aspect. As the producer said, in some sense it is actually a “pretty” film – the sun shines, the music is nice and the characters love each other. Only that they are followed by a horrifying spirit. (08/07/2014)

The film follows its inspirations quite flamboyantly, but it's also not afraid to go its own way. Therefore, the only thing that really comes to mind is why the adults in the story are glossed over with such vigor and why we don't know more about the gentleman in the photo - in that case, it would have been a decent crawl at the end and not just a flowing breast-stroke. (14/08/2015)

A sympathetic horror hipster that works quite well as a "coming of age" story about uncertainty, but worse as a genre piece. The attack attempts by ghosts in make-up are stupid and bring the film down. Although Mitchell has a good sense for visuals, the design (Detroit again) works best when it comes to working with tension and space, but it's not particularly inventive (the scene on the wheelchair is explicitly amateurish). I value the effort to update and the overlap, but the result is only slightly above average. (25/07/2014)

The Christian fundamentalist right in the USA once again came up with a plan on how to strike a deadly blow to sin, and they realized that they should use more modern methods when addressing the young generation. So they paid David Mitchell and he crafted a script on how one's first sexual experience can unleash the worst demons and destroy those who wanted to have some fun and sin a little bit. It's definitely not clever or impressive to me. There are much better films in this genre, so why waste time with this? Overall impression: 25%. (23/04/2017)

A pretty original idea and a pleasantly unpleasant Carpenter-like atmosphere, but the shooting scenes and the like bring it down from my point of view. Surely characters who appear in a horror movie don't have to act stupid just because they appear in a horror movie, right? (30/04/2016)

Halloween for the XXI century. Unlike Carpenter’s masterpiece, Mitchell doesn’t bring anything particularly new or refreshing to the table, the power and effect of It Follows comes primarily from the way it returns to the prudent and old-fashioned representatives of the genre – there’s no need to create a cool killer and attack the viewer with exhibitions of style, it’s enough to highlight the most natural human needs, making you nervous with the sensation that your space will be breached by an indomitable, mysterious intruder. A very well cast and very beautiful Maika Monroe, a great retro music score and lots of creative awareness, all producing an attractive film space without any concrete period definitions (the cars speak of the 80s while the clothes and the design of the houses are almost identical to the present), without deviating formally from the “slasher” plane towards broader intellectual lines, which the premise smartly attacks. I would have liked a tighter ending, but it does keep its coherence and ambiguity. 85% and the fifth star is because no other horror movie from the entire decade deserves it more. (21/03/2020)

Un film de la vieille école. Il fonctionne sur de nombreux aspects (personnages, dialogues, musique, construction du suspense et de la peur) que les films d’horreur actuels peinent souvent à traiter correctement. Je ne vois pas comment je pourrais ne pas apprécier cette œuvre. Dommage que les créateurs n’aient pas joué un peu plus avec le look des poursuivants. Néanmoins, je suis enchanté par tout le reste et suis épaté de constater que D. R. Mitchell a pu créer un film d’horreur d’une telle qualité sans avoir recours au moindre jump scare – et avec une ambiance joliment amenée ! [KVIFF 2014] (20/06/2018)

Le sujet du film est inventif et original (et en même temps simple). J'aime la manière dont le réalisateur a décidé de ne pas suivre le chemin du carnage sanglant ou des jump scares ennuyeux, et a plutôt réalisé un film d'horreur dans le sens traditionnel du terme, qui est effrayant grâce à son ambiance et aux plans qui se rapprochent lentement du personnage. Cependant, il aurait pu être encore plus effrayant et réussi s'il avait été un tant soit peu intelligent ! Les personnages du film se comportent comme des idiots et leurs tentatives de tuer l'ennemi sont ridicules (qu'est-ce qu'ils espéraient accomplir dans cette scène avec la piscine ?) et je me demande ce qui se serait passé s'ils étaient partis sur un autre continent. La prémisse du film est excellente et extrêmement effrayante, mais cela ne garantit pas un film d'horreur de grande qualité. (08/07/2014)

Personally, the movie "You Can't Escape" didn't really appeal to me that much, but I still think it's at least an average good horror. It could benefit from being a bit shorter, as not that much significant happens in those hundred minutes that couldn't be cut by twenty minutes. Additionally, I believe that in such case, the atmosphere could be even more oppressive. (22/07/2016)

Brilliant minimalism. How sumptuous a genre horror film can look when it sets two simple rules that it sticks to dutifully from start to finish! David Robert Mitchell has won my great fondness, mainly because he has managed to make one hell of a genre entry for two million using a specific retro-analog atmosphere and a homogenous script. And that the soundtrack is very reminiscent of Carpenter's classics or Argento's giallo pieces is probably no coincidence. (06/03/2020)