It Follows
Where: Cineplex Odeon
When: Tonight, 9:15
Rating: 3/5 stars
It’s easy to see why David Robert Mitchell’s unsettling and playfully derivative horror film has created a splash on the festival circuit. Mitchell toys with genre conventions in classic slasher flicks such as Halloween and Friday the 13th in which a homicidal apparition targets sexually active teenagers. In his fresh take, a shape-shifting stalker inflicts on its victims — beginning with well-cast Maika Monroe as a suburban Michigan neighbourhood’s popular girl — a curse escapable only by being sexually transmitted to someone else. Or so it initially seems. Hardcore horror fans might find it a bit too arty and muted by current standards, but Mitchell puts a twist on familiar tropes, enhanced by Rich Vreeland’s eerily atmospheric electronic score and witty references to horror-meisters from George A. Romero to John Carpenter. It all seems uniquely unnerving until the narrative spirals out of control, relying more on cheap tricks that too often substitute for tension in modern fright flicks.
READ MORE ›› Victoria Film Festival