It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2015)

The unceasing sense of dread from the first to the last frame of It Follows, is something that thousands of other horror films reach for, but find beyond their grasp more often than not. Due in no small part to employing a cinematographic language grown from the bones of early John Carpenter, It Follows is successful in creating the kind of movie going experience that leaves the viewer searching the frame from edge to edge for some clue to where the danger will come next. The wide angle and long takes lend themselves well to instilling and developing the sense of dread and anxious suspense that take elements of the films narrative and express it through the kind of visual language that work on the viewers subconscious. The result is that the anxiety, tension, dread and fear that the narrative is trying to build and that the characters are supposed to be feeling is mirrored very directly by the audience.

The STD as the delivery mechanism for horror isn't a completely new invention by any means. Cronenberg's classic, Shivers, along with the very well done and unfortunately under recognized Contracted (currently available to stream on Netflix) use it, but It Follows strays away from the kind of body/biological horror the other films of this variety use and instead heads off into supernatural territory. Shockingly enough, as horrifying as they are in real life, STD's aren't an often used story element in horror or sci-fi, which works in the films favor. Heading away from the science fiction aspects that have been at the center of previous films that have attempted to incorporate STD's, puts even the more seasoned film goer at the disadvantage (or advantage, depending on the particular viewers preference) of not being able to refer to previous incarnations of the idea for frames of reference as to where the story might be going. That alone is an unusual feat and deserves recognition.

The It of It Follows is never fully explained, which is to film maker David Robert Mitchell's credit. The basic conceit at the center of the story being that one character transfers the attentions of the shape shifting It to another through intercourse. It is going to follow until It kills you. It can look like anyone and the only way to get rid of It is to give It to someone else.

This is not a film as concerned with neatly tying up it's story and plot as it is with putting the audience through the experience of It following. The success of the film and it's often unsettling and sometimes genuinely frightening moments are due to that focus. Where most other horror films are obsessed with the origin of the horror, vanquishing it and the story that happens in between those two points, It Follows leaves basically all of those tropes behind. What we're told about the thing stalking Jay, the teenage protagonist, comes from the person who gave it to her and who is very clearly an unreliable source for definitive information. This lack of concrete understanding serves to add another layer to the sense of dread the cinematography creates by putting the audience in the position of knowing no more about what's trying to kill her than she does, but always seeing it coming. The tension derived from that unknown heightens the stakes behind every decision her character makes, because there isn't any absolute. There is no magic incantation, no scientific wizardry, no definitive way for Jay to get free from Its pursuit. There is no solution, and we can see It coming.

When it does take on some of the tropes of so many past horror films, they are dealt with in a way that expresses the reality of this very unreal experience. Engaging to some degree in the "kids have to figure it out on their own and save the day" kind of story that was extremely popular in the eighties, It Follows leaves the territory of the heroic and delves directly into the relationships between the group of teenagers with a remarkable precision. As fantastic and unreal as a supernatural STD is, the relationships between the kids are very real, and very much filled with the kind of uncertainty that is a hallmark of the mid to late teens. In that way, the film is actually more real and more truthful than even most of the mainstream dramas that attempt to delve into the world of being a teenager.

As easy as it would be to read the film as the kind of puritanical trash so many other horror films trade on and use as currency, there are aspects of it that suggest something much more interesting is happening. There is a very real connection between what Jay experiences and the experiences of victims of rape, sexual assault or anyone who has experienced PTSD. Few films, even the more lauded mainstream "issue" films that attempt to address it, have been as good at conveying the feeling of constant danger, anxiety, and hyper vigilance that are the real power of the results of sexual assault that are most damaging in the long term. Other films may express the injustice and brutality of those experiences, but this film conveys the actual feelings, and it's easy to wonder if the title It Follows is as much about the experience following being assaulted or raped, because it certainly puts the audience more directly into that experience than most films would even begin to consider because most of them lack any real understanding. This isn't something the usual "sex gets you killed" puritanical garbage would ever attempt to portray. Those films lack any empathy for the victim. It Follows isn't begging for the audience to feel pity for Jay, it's trying to make them feel what she feels, and it does so damn well. Maika Monroe, who plays Jay, imbues the character with a combination of traits and emotions that makes her very real in this very unreal world, and is able to move fluidly from being a pro active agent for her own well being to being someone who can barely grasp the reality of their situation without ever stumbling into the territory of making that transition seem false, forced or without base. She can convey a kind of watchful distance from the other characters, then also convey an immediate, urgent need for it all to just stop and all of the emotional territory between in a way that makes Jay a very real, very human character that gives the audience the window into that very same experience. None of this seems designed as something Maika Monroe or David Robert Mitchell are making a definitive comment on so much as making them a part of the overall experience.

Time and setting are also really interesting parts of what make the film work. It is timeless, in the sense that the costuming and set design give no real sense of when the film takes place. It's as likely to be present day as it is to be some slightly alternative version of the 80's or 90's. As time is such an important factor in giving people some degree of mooring and context for the understanding and world view of characters and their environment, it just adds to a dream like quality that is at the outer edge of the films atmosphere. The only real indicator of time are some of the locations which fit directly into the rest of the film in that they could be now or thirty years ago, and then a preoccupation with urban decay as an indicator that there was a time before, that time is gone, and the present the film takes place in isn't nearly as prosperous. Being set in and outside Detroit, there's no lack of urban and suburban decay for the characters to wander through, and the sole conversation in the film that the main characters have is much more a description of their relationship to it as children than it is on the decay itself.

In conjunction with that, there are virtually no present adults in the film. Jay's mom is almost entirely absent, except to show that she is absent as a formative influence or means of support for her daughter. With those few exceptions, the perspective we're given on the adults comes from Jay and the few friends who are attempting to either help her or keep her from losing her mind, because they aren't all completely sure that what she is experiencing is actually real. Between the decay and blight of the past being so much a part of the setting and the narrative suggestion that the adults are dealing with their own demons, the time and setting become a part of conveying the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that contribute the sense of anxiety in the film. These teenagers seem doomed to a world that is in a state of constant decay and if they're parents are any indication, their future seems to be a struggle with hopelessness and decay, even without the addition of a supernatural force trying to kill one of them.

David Robert Mitchell doesn't seem to be making any kind of definitive comment about any of these weightier, heavier themes so much as meditating on them in a general way or using them as a way to make the overall impact of the experience of watching the film have more weight and resonance. What is interesting about their inclusion in the film is that they do mimic the way they work in real life. They are peripheral in the film, and in the lives of people who are experiencing them, they often seem peripheral and distant as they're going about the more urgent necessities of their daily lives, but as distant as those larger issues and ideas may seem, they are having an effect on daily life. Most of us are just trying to get through our days, and though we may be aware that our past experiences and our environment have some effect on us, it's not something we're objectively conscious of. They are things that muddle around in the backs of our minds while we're doing what needs to be done to live and survive. In that way, Mitchell has made a film whose emotional exactitude between the urgent necessity of the immediate situation at hand and the way the past and the environment influence it is pretty amazing.

It Follows isn't a standard horror film. Audience going to see it specifically because it's being hailed as "The scariest movie in a decade" are probably going to be disappointed. It's too unusual and too methodical for the majority of modern horror audiences. It's not preoccupied with telling a fairy tale story as much as it is providing a cinematic experience that recreates or instills it's characters emotions in it's audience as effectively as possible. It has much more in common with The Shining than it does with The Haunted, and even though The Shining is now consider a classic, must see of the horror cannon, it's less linear approach will have much less mass appeal. It's interesting, effective film making with more attention to emotional detail than to hitting the requisite plot points and it creates an incredibly effective atmosphere of dread that will be a welcome departure for more discerning film and horror buffs.

Excision (RIchard Bates Jr, 2012)

It's no surprise that so many horror films feature adolescents and that they are the audience the films are meant for. Unless you're the most fortunate of individuals, the kind who won all of the lotteries of fate, granted the genetic ticket to have grown into someone that matches societies description of physical beauty, a materially comfortable and secure home, a relatively well adjusted family, and the confidence that comes with all of that, chances are adolescence is not going to be an easy, simple time in your life that doesn't involve stress and confusion that you're barely capable of handling.

Horror films are a great outlet for that stress and tension, and many of them are created by people who understand that experience from a very personal standpoint. The best of these kinds of films distill that combination of sheer terror, youthful energy, and the hope that somewhere, somehow the confidence and capability the world seems to value are going to available. In the case of horror films, they usually aren't available to the characters until after some horrible, terrifying experience has threatened their physical safety, their immortal souls or something else your average teenager finds of great value. It's not a mistake that for decades, horror films were based on a lone survivor having watched their entire circle of friends unceremoniously massacred by a maniac wielding a variety of different weapons. It represented both the connection to community that many teenagers experience and fear losing and the degree of competition in that community. As budding adults, teenagers and adolescents are basically new converts to the adult experience. They haven't quite gotten there and don't have the acceptance that an adult does though. As with any other new convert in any other subset or society, they're also the one's who are going to most forcefully enforce group norms as part of the insecure need to feel they belong and deserve their place, and in doing so, they end up creating a hyper competitiveness, which comes out in horror films as the inevitable whittling down of the community or competitors to one lone survivor, who has survived because of some combination of traits they've drawn on either purposely or by chance, that the others lacked.

Excision explores many of those same ideas from a perspective that couldn't be more different from your standard horror film. After seeing it to the end, few people would argue that this isn't a horror film, but it doesn't deal with it's characters or it's content in the way audiences generally expect a horror film with an adolescent as the central character to deal with them. It's instead presenting a view of that experience and the kind of hyper competitiveness that comes with it from the perspective of someone who is more or less experiencing it from the outside and not as a member of a small community of friends.

Borderland (2007, directed by Zev Berman)

I'm not sure who Zev Berman is, but he stole my idea. Five or so years ago, maybe a little more, I read a story about a town in Mexico called Matamoros. It was a news article about a group of kids visiting a Texas town near the border for spring break. They decide to take a trip across the border to Mexico and, like hundreds of thousands of kids before them, look for an even more decadent experience. Well, one of them disappeared. In the months that followed, as Americans of different varieties, F.B.I etc. get involved it eventually comes out that this missing American got snapped up by a drug dealing, human sacrificing cult. Corruption, on a terrifying level was also at work, because everyone within tens of miles of the groups headquarters was terrified of ending up under the knife, machete, what have you. Seriously. I'm really not joking. It did happen.

I read that article all those years back and immediately started my own screenplay. I never finished that screenplay, so I'm not saying Zev Berman stole my actual screenplay, I'm not even actually saying the guy stole my idea. This has all been a round about way of telling you that the essential facts of this story are actually true.And that I kicked myself for not finishing the screenplay.

Borderland is the dramatization of that story. Because of the fact that this film was picked up by the After Dark Horrorfest, and in the three years or so it's existed, After Dark has only really picked up two or three good films, I really had very low expectations. If you're not familiar, After Dark is a traveling film festival, essentially a distribution banner for horror films. Each year, they choose eight films which haven't been picked up by anyone else, get them into limited distribution in theaters and then into the DVD/Blu Ray market. It's been at least three years so far, and they really have only gotten their hands on two or three films which could claw their way to being called decent and not horribly, laughably bad. It's become kind of like seeing Micheal Pare' is starring in a movie. Borderland has helped to convince me I should still give these films a shot, in case one of the future releases is this good.

It's relatively obvious Borderland was made with the kind of money most Hollywood films spend in food services. It becomes another example in a long list of those which prove Hollywood, really doesn't have a very good handle on what to do with their money, because we've probably seen a few hundred thousand films trying to do what Borderland does, with twice or three times as much money, and fail. It plays well, throughout, and it manages to create and keep building on a sense of urgency that drives the narrative forward, and provides a few small surprises along the way. It also has the kind of tension and suspense which  many of it's big budget brethren just can't nail down very well. It's a very well done film.

Borderlands is a graphic film, with some scenes of relatively extreme violence. The interesting thing about the film, and the violence in it, is the degree of fetishism it actually contains. One of the complaints levied against horror films for a long time has been that the violence is too fetishistic and that makes it too appealing. This, actually, makes it even less appealing. This is tough and ugly, as it should be. Especially considering the "true to life" nature of the subject matter, this is something I think works in the film's favor.

Unfortunately, IMDB doesn't have anything listed as being directed by Zev Berman after this film. He managed to put together a good small budget film, and attract some decent talent. Sean Astin turns up in the middle of the film in a role you would never have imagined, but that he seems absolutely perfectly fit for. It's not a huge part, but what is there, he does a really good job with. The same can be said for Rider Strong, formerly of Boy Meets World fame, and will be familiar to horror fans from Cabin Fever. The other two  male leads don't seem to have been in anything I recognize or have seen, and they do a decent job. The real find here is in Martha Higareda  who is great as Valeria, a bar tender the trio meet their first night in old Mexico. It's a good performance from someone unknown to American audiences. She's also a classically elegant beauty that combined with this performance is more than you often find in the "it girl", who ever it happens to be this week.

In short, Borderlands was definitely worth seeing. I caught it through Fearnet on demand on our Verizon Fios, and I liked it enough that I'll probably pick a copy up at some point in the near future. Best Buy apparently sells it for $9.99 on DVD, which I think is a good value for this film.