Movies

The Avocado Movie Club #8: It Follows (2014)

Welcome to the Movie Club! This week’s movie continues our horror theme for Halloween with David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows! 

The South Korean movie poster. Indie movies like this don’t have the strongest international poster game.

It Follows stars Maika Monroe as Jaime Height, a young college aged woman who, after having sex with her new boyfriend for the first time, finds herself being stalked by a deadly monster that can disguise itself as different people and follows them relentlessly until they pass the curse off to someone else. She is aided by her sister and their close friends as they band together in an attempt to defeat the monster and free her from its curse. 

Initially premiering with a lot of buzz at Cannes in 2014, It Follows later received a wider release in the spring of 2015. Critics adored it, as it has a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the larger horror community was equally receptive. It managed to earn around $23 million on a budget of only $1.3 million12, with a lot of the praise focusing on its measured pace, focus on tension and suspense, visuals inspired by classic horror directors like John Carpenter, and the synth score from Disasterpeace. A sequel, titled They Follow, is currently in pre-production, with plans to start shooting next year.

Trivia:345 

  • David Robert Mitchell was originally inspired by a recurring anxiety dream he had in his youth that he attributes to his parent’s divorce at the time.
  • The film’s visuals were inspired by not only John Carpenter, but other non-horror films like Paris, Texas, Rear Window, and Blue Velvet, along with the “surreal suburban” photography of Gregory Crewdson.
  • David Robert Mitchell was inspired to hire Disasterpeace after hearing his score for the game Fez, which he had played a few years prior to creating the film.

What did you think? Share your thoughts below! 

Up Next: The RNG process of making the schedule decided that the spooky vibes should continue for a bit longer, so our next movie is Jack Clayton’s classic psychological horror film The Innocents (1961) and the thread will be posted on November 1! In a surprise twist of events though, this movie is only available to stream IN CANADA?! But the good news is that, once again, some kind soul has uploaded it in 4K on YouTube:

Canada

  • Stream: Hollywood Suite On Demand, or by subscribing to Hollywood Suite on Prime Video. 
  1. https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/5-reasons-it-follows-became-the-surprise-indie-hit-of-the-year-57345/ ↩︎
  2. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/It-Follows#tab=summary ↩︎
  3. https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a633564/exploring-the-horror-of-it-follows-david-robert-mitchell-interview/
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  4. https://filmmakermagazine.com/93629-we-didnt-have-to-add-too-much-creepiness-it-follows-dp-mike-gioulakis/#.VqhjVlMrLMU ↩︎
  5. https://www.filmindependent.org/blog/it-follows-director-david-robert-mitchell-on-how-he-brought-his-bold-vision-to-the-screen/ ↩︎