It Follows

Just when it seemed that there would never be another original teen horror movie comes this rough-edged but pleasingly creepy American indie, which puts suburban teens at risk from a seemingly inescapable presence. Shot in decaying Detroit, it riffs on a number of recent horror trends, notably the Japanese cycle of malevolent ghost stories begun with 1997's Ring. But at the same time it draws on the tropes of traditional B-movie stalk-and-slash thrillers, particularly John Carpenter's inventive 1978 bogeyman tale Halloween. Gruesome murder set pieces are not the focus here, however. Unusually sensitive to its female cast (led by the captivating Maika Monroe), It Follows makes explicit the usual horror movie subtext about teenage sexuality, updating it to the era of social media. The result is a film that's more about goosebumps than gore, with an unsettling, slow-moving, shape-changing monster that sticks like glue to its victims and won't stop, ever, till it gets what it wants.