I still haven’t seen The Babadook, but I will before I can officially declare It Follows the best horror film I saw this year, but barring a late run by The Babadook, It Follows, from director David Robert Mitchell, is far and away the best horror film I saw this year and one of the best of any genre. It opens in France in February (hence the French subtitles here) and is getting a US release some time in 2015. In the meantime, check out this creepy ass trailer.
My own description, from my review:
It Follows is about a supernatural STD, a sexually transmitted demon if you will, that has begun to infect the bored teens of suburban Michigan. It follows its victims around, slowly but relentlessly, taking different, terrifying, often bleeding and bare-titted human forms, that only those infected can see. It plays by African witch doctor rules, where the only way to get rid of it is to f*ck it into someone else. It’s one of those concepts that’s genius, dopey, and hilarious all at once, with clearly-articulated rules peculiar to itself. It Follows uses this delightfully odd vision of the fantastic to explore the terrifying sexual subtext of suburban adolescence. It’s sort of like if The Virgin Suicides (the Jeffrey Eugenides book, anyway, I never saw the Sofia Coppola movie) was a straight-up horror movie.
Cast includes Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, and Lili Sepe, and they’re all pretty great. That a demon will follow you around until you have sex with someone is a nice little metaphor for my adolescence.