IT FOLLOWS

(David Robert Mitchell, 2014)

The American suburbs. Daytime. Synthesisers.
Why this particular combination of elements should be so creepy I have no idea, but it undeniably is. And it's just the starting point for David Robert Mitchell's chilling It Follows.
The story follows Jay (Maika Monroe, excellent), a teen in the Northern suburbs of Detroit. Early on, she sleeps with a guy, and afterwards, he changes instantly. Not just being distant and never calling her; no - he drugs her and ties her to a wheelchair, the better to demonstrate exactly what he means to tell her. He tells her that he has passed something onto her, a curse of sorts. It means that she is now being followed by something undefinable, a shape-shifting creature which is always walking directly towards her, wherever she is, wherever it is. It never runs and it never stops. And if it touches her, she is dead. Sometimes it will take the form of a perfect stranger, sometimes a loved one. Only she can see it.
Her anguished, desperate attempts to escape compose the film, as she and her friends run away, then try to destroy the creature. If that bogeyman sounds a little lame, it becomes quickly apparent that it instead has more or less unlimited potential for frights. Every shot of a doorway becomes drenched with tension. Every window. Every exterior with figures walking in the background. Mitchell knows well enough that if he features enough of these shots then the rise in tension gives his actual scares more impact when they eventually do come. And come they do, in a series of beautifully mounted set-pieces, which inventively play on the specific terror of this implacable, blank-eyed shape-shifter.
The tone is sober and muted throughout. Like Mitchell's terrific debut, The Myth of the American Sleepover, It Follows is set in a strangely timeless sort of suburban world, all big lawns and wide streets. The characters are earnest, serious, lacking the flip cynicism of the teens in most modern horror cinema. But then this is nothing like most modern horror cinema, being artier and far more ambiguous, the moody synth score by Disasterpiece helping maintain that feeling of low, sickly dread throughout. There is also ample, obvious subtext here, themes of teenage alienation running alongside the key ideas of sexually transmitted disease and social stigma.
But they never get in the way of the chief aim: to frighten the audience, which is something It Follows does tremendously well.

THE GUEST

(Adam Wingard, 2014)

The sort of lowish budget genre mash-up that makes mega-budget blockbusters look really inept. Many of those movies can't get one genre right, but here Wingard and screenwriter Michael Barrett manage to successfully, gleefully combine a few in a nifty, modest little thriller with wit, style and impact.
Dan Stevens is beautifully used. His character, the too-nice-to-be true soldier David, returns to the U.S. after a stint somewhere in the Middle East and checks in on the family of his friend who has been killed in action. Only there is something off about David. Something studied and watchful, and when he is left alone, his face reverts to a malevolent scowl. These are the best passages in the movie; as David sets about getting to know this family and helping them in his own way, Wingard focuses on Stevens' piercing blue eyes and the actor emphasises his own bland charm until it becomes something vaguely sinister. He brutally, spectacularly beats up the bulles who have been making teen nerd Luke's life hell, listens to Dad's (Leland Orser) work woes, shares tales of their deceased son with Mom (Sheila Kelley) and accompanies Anna (Maika Monroe) to a party where his studly decency and decisiveness in dealing with the arrival of an angry ex-boyfriend goes down very well.
But Anna is suspicious, and soon people start to turn up dead, and we learn that David is not quite what he seems, and that there are serious, extremely armed people after him.
The last act, then, transforms into a mixture of shoot-em-up action film and stalker film, but Wingard handles both genres well. The finale takes place in a high school gym set up for a Halloween Ball, including a Halloween maze and lots of dry ice, and there are moments referring to everything from John Carpenter and The Terminator to The Hitcher and Hitchcock. A big set-piece gun battle decimating an isolated farmhouse is nicely done, and the whole thing makes a virtue of it's few locations and small cast, upping the tension through an intense focus on the dynamic within the home of one family after they invite one guest to stay.
Wingard directs with style and precision - there is a vivid, warm colour palette here and some beautiful compositions, and the '80s-esque electro soundtrack by Steve Moore helps to build a thickly suspenseful atmosphere.