K-SCORE: 20
Writer/Director: David Robert Mitchell
Starring: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe
Spoiler Level: Moderate
It Follows… very very slowly. And by slowly I mean fucking slow!
It’s not very often that I make this recommendation, but if you absolutely must watch It Follows because you’re weirdly obsessed with paranormal horror stories, despite their success rate, then I’d advise you watch it follow on fast forward. There’s little dialogue and what dialogue does exist merely explains the premise. Never do the characters discover significant clarifying information about the ghostly entity that takes many humanoid forms and walks in a vaguely menacing way in their general direction, nor do they discover how to defeat it. So, once you get the idea that it’s all about a STEB (sexually transmitted evil being) you can really fly through the scenes where the EB shows up and the teenagers easily escape by running away or driving away. It is, after all, really slow.
I don’t know whether the likely-political-assassin-patsy director/writer was attempting to create a film that encourages abstinence. It’s possible that that was his goal, but I bet it’s not going to work. If you don’t want teenagers to have sex, don’t film teenagers having sex. And if you want your movie to send a message, don’t make it so boring that people will fall asleep while watching it.