It Follows

It Follows (2015) is built on a single rule, and that rule generates all of its tension. Jay sleeps with someone and he passes something to her. From then on a thing starts walking toward her. Only she can see it. It never runs, it walks, and it never stops. If it reaches you it kills you. The only escape is to sleep with someone else and pass it on; but if that person dies, it comes back to you. The brilliance is that the threat is slow. Escape is always possible, which is exactly why you never relax: getting away is not a solution, only a postponement. The camera often sits wide and you find yourself scanning the background for someone walking. The period is deliberately unfixed. Old televisions, no phones, but one character uses an electronic reader shaped like a shell. What year this is is never stated. It was shot in Detroit and the city's abandoned districts are part of the film; which side of a line you live on is discussed by the characters. The score is by Disasterpeace, who came from video game music, and the synthesiser sound connects it directly to eighties horror. It has been read as a metaphor for sexually transmitted infection; the director does not accept that as the only reading. It runs 101 minutes. Good for: slow horror, formally intelligent genre work, and independent cinema. Less good for: there is sex and nudity, the ending is open, and anyone expecting conventional scares will not find them.