It Follows 4K 2014 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

After a sexual encounter, a 19-year-old girl named Jay begins to be plagued by strange visions and an overwhelming feeling that someone or something is watching her.

Review 4K Movie

Director and screenwriter Robert David Mitchell manages to create a phenomenal atmosphere of nervous tension in his second feature. His story comes out of nowhere and most of the time is in a kind of anabiotic nightmare in which the action waddles along at a snail's pace. Something is happening on the screen all the time, but you get the impression that nothing is happening. Static plans, some kind of somnambulistic contemplation of the sluggishly flowing life of one-story America, and diluting this viscous substance are periodic 360-degree panoramic camera rotations, which, with the general tension in the air, make you stare intently at the screen.

'It Follows' starts with a lengthy prologue, in which the dusky timelessness of the suburbs is interrupted by a strange scene of a frightened girl jogging around the neighborhood, whose aesthetically broken corpse is later shown lying on the beach. It is in this initially obscure scene that the whole essence of Mitchell's movie - total paranoia and constant flight from conventional danger - is concealed. The plot does not intend to provide any explanation of the nature of the mystical force terrorizing the heroes. It is only clear that 'it' is sexually transmitted and begins to pursue the victim, taking the form of different people. One can run away from 'it', hide for a while, but one can only get rid of it by passing the conditional curse on. However, salvation is illusory - if the chain of intercourse is interrupted, the unknown force will start killing people in reverse order, until someone suddenly starts the process again.

Of course, it all looks a lot sillier in words than it actually turns out to be. Mitchell creates an almost parallel reality, within which the protagonist - a representative of the depressed generation Jay tries to cope with the nightmare that fell on her head. Together with the company of her acquaintances the girl as if to shut off from the surrounding world, the inhabitants of which 'will not believe anyway' and finds herself face to face with a difficult choice in the form of bringing some unfortunate to the brink of a nervous breakdown, but the hopelessness of the situation forces to go to extreme measures. It is interesting that Mitchell with his idea underhandedly pushes the heroine to the pedestal of casual sexual relations, but operates the available material on hand very subtly, as a result of which the girl looks only a driven victim, and sex as such is present on the screen only partially. Special attention is paid to the lead actress Maika Monroe, who for the second time in a row (after Wingard's recent 'The Guest') appears in an '80s throwback film and delivers a surprisingly powerful performance that gives the young actress a chance for a promising future.

'It Follows' is not so much a frightening as an exhausting movie - the constant ringing footage keeps your eyes on the screen, but there are hardly any truly scary moments. The only scene that deserves a special mention is the fight with the relentless 'something' in the pool. Logically unreasonable, drawn by ears episode in the end turns out to be almost the best thing that was shown in horror movies for the last time. In fact, post facto, Mitchell's picture looks more like a kind of film-art, in which the accuracy of the production prevails over the content and the replacement of the action with visual and sound (the soundtrack by Disasterpeace just beats in ecstasy) equilibrium does not happen only because of the need for any ideological framing of the story. Where it all began and how it all ends (will it ever end?) is essentially unimportant - by outlining the storyline with only tentative strokes, Mitchell influences the viewer with a concentrate of almost narcotic delirium. But perhaps this is what the ideal horror of today should be - frighteningly no-nonsense and at the same time permanently embedded in the memory. And who knows what that walk through the quiet evening streets will lead to in the end, because 'it' is inexorable.