"It Follows" Marks a New Day In Horror

     Hello ladies and gents,  your favorite horror aficionado Vik Azeem is back with a "State of the Horror Address."  

"My fellow Americans, Paranormal Activity sucked so hard...."

     As many of you know, the horror genre has pretty much stunk for the last ten years.  The golden days of yesteryear where we had thriving horror franchises pumping out sequel after sequel are over.   Horror is a dying breed these days.   There certainly are a few exceptions to the rule.  Sinister was decent,  Drag Me to Hell was a lot of fun, and The Conjuring had some actual thrills.  But mostly we've gotten trash like Insidious,  all of the Paranormal Activity sequels,  Annabelle, and don't get me started on Ouija (which represents a new low in the horror genre).

     Enter It Follows, a low budget horror film that was meant to be direct to video, but had such a crazy, cult following, build up that it was given a run in theaters.   I was there opening night, trying to block out all the hype surrounding it so I could take it in with an open mind and not overly high expectations.  Now despite the title of this article, I'm not going to hype this movie up too much or put the movie on a magical pedastal.   It is not all time classic in the genre.

     But, it is a welcome entry in a genre that is on life support.  It's not so much a great horror movie, as it is different.  As an old man who I used to fish with would say,  "if you can't be better, you gotta be different."  Alright that's a complete fabrication as I've never actually been fishing, but in my mind that's what the old man would have said if he did exist.   'It Follows' is about a girl who is given a curse in the form of a menacing STD.   She's had sex with a guy who had a killer alterior motive.   The story then is as simple as the title, 'IT' follows a girl in walking form and won't stop until it both kills the girl and is given US citizenship!   Or at least they should persue the citizenship storyline in the sequel.   There isn't much explanation given to where 'It' originated from.   We just know that it can appear in the form of a friend or stranger, and it always is walking towards our protagonist, slowly.

"There's a slowly walking lifeguard...why would I be afraid of that? Oh yeah..."

     It's not a slasher film or a ghost in the house film, but it's a film that has a very interesting concept.  The star of the film is Maika Monroe, who had a great starring turn in the underground horror film The Guest.   She does a great job being the confused girl who doesn't seem to have a job or go to school full time, but then again those are the details the movie chooses to ignore.   The concept is what makes the film fantastic.   There are rules established about how 'It' operates that honestly could make for many sequels.

     I have to give mad props to director David Robert Mitchell, who crafts a film that is very reminiscent of the first Halloween, with some pretty clear nods to other classic horror films like Nightmare on Elm Street.  He is clearly a fan of the genre and it shows.   The film stays away from jump scares and mostly derives scares from the claustrophobic situation that our main character has found herself in.  There is a sense of dread lurking in the background of every scene as the film moves towards it's conclusion.

     And that is where the movie falters.  The first half of the movie is fantastic, but it runs of steam and gives us a very flat ending   It's like a fast food meal where the burger is great but the fries are soggy with no salt.   This happens a lot of times in horror, like with the first Jeepers Creepers.  I friggin LOVED the first half, than they reveal creature and it takes a nose dive.   The ending keeps it from being as good as it could have been.  

     I still have to give a tip of the hat to a movie that organically feels like a change of pace in a genre that needs a new direction.  The ghost in the house idea is tired, and slasher movies peaked in the 80s.  We need some new blood in the horror genre, and It Follows is a good first step.

ON NETFLIX:

I watched two older horror films on Netflix this week which were a lot of fun.  The first is SLEEPAWAY CAMP 2.   Man, where you have been all my life?   This was made in the peak of the 80's horror slasher era.   And it's a lot of fun.   It was so much fun that I immediately sought to see Sleepway Camp 3 which is also on NETFLIX .   I gotta give this a reccomendation.

The other one I saw was Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, made in 1990.   So this is spun off from The Tales from the Darkside TV show, a fantastic anthology series in the mold of Tales from the Crypt.  If you like anthology movies, you'll appreciate this.  A good way to kill an hour and a half.   It put me in the mood to seek out Tales from the Hood, but that's a review for another day.

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