I’m no horror aficionado, but I decided to face my fears and check out this critical darling.

What’s It About? After Jay has sex with her new boyfriend for the first time, she becomes the target of a deadly spectre that haunts her wherever she goes.

STRAIGHT UP: Expertly composed; terrifies without resorting to gimmicks. 10/10

Note: The spectre will be named “Follower” for the purposes of this review.

What I Liked

It follows – The movie’s title is also its premise and the source of its terrifying atmosphere. It follows. Everywhere. It never stops. That’s all it does. It follows.

Using ambiguity to create horror – There are things about Follower that you will never know. There are things about the characters that are never explained. These are things you are not meant to understand. Any more exposition would have ruined the element of fear, and the fun.

Perfect sound design – The soundtrack comes in at the right time to turn any mundane scene into one of unbearable tension, but it’s not grating or overbearing. Spooky SFX are used sparingly, but effectively.

Beautiful camera work – The camera knows exactly where to be and how to move to maximize tension at all times. Background details are important, too – what’s happening just out of focus is sometimes the most interesting part of a scene.

Deliberate pacing – The movie uses slow-burning dread and oppressive atmosphere to sell its scares, and structures its narrative to fit. There’s a lot of downtime, but it’s there to teach the audience what to expect.

Sex as a weapon – Horror movies commonly mix sexual motifs in with their scares, but rarely as artfully as It Follows does. Tantalizing at first, the sex scenes eventually become tense, frightening, and even tragic.

The ending – Fits with the theme of the film perfectly. Good luck, you two.

What I Disliked

Don’t show it – One of Follower’s kills is partially caught on-camera, and I kind of wish it hadn’t been. It doesn’t ruin the film by any means, but I felt that Follower was scariest when I was completely in the dark about what it did to its victims.

CLOSING THOUGHT: I could very easily praise this movie to the point where I’d have to expand this into a full-length review. This is the first time I’ve had so many good things to say about a movie that I’m still not sure if I’ve listed them all. That’s even without me being able to spoil my favorite scenes or dig into the film’s underlying themes and messages, which might take a whole blog post of their own to discuss. The most important thing to consider, though, is this: It Follows turns the act of “walking forward at a casual pace” into the scariest fucking thing imaginable for about 90 minutes. That’s the hallmark of a great horror movie.