It Follows

After a drifting suburban Detroit teen sleeps with her new boyfriend, she learns that he has “passed on” to her a malevolent presence, one that will never stop its slow but deadly pursuit. In just his second feature, writer-director David Cameron Mitchell (The Myth of the American Sleepover) produces one of the best horror films of the millennium. The story touches on themes of venereal disease, rape, contagion fears, PTSD and more, while combining cinematic influences from zombies, ghosts, slashers, J-horror, conspiracy thrillers, exorcisms, Robert Altman, teen sex comedies, apocalypses, John Carpenter, chase films and the first five minutes of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening into something deeply unsettling and nightmarishly lucid. Imagine if Texas Chainsaw Massacre-era Tobe Hooper directed a Richard Linklater rewrite of Under the Skin. A few clunky special effects and easy jump scares aside, It Follows is intelligent and terrifying, an instant genre classic. D.B.