Total creep-fest. 2015 was looking for a legitimate horror. While this movie has completely flown under the radar for the general public, word of mouth has allowed the independent It Follows to become a cult classic quickly. Not only is this the best horror movie of 2015, but it is also the best horror movie in years. Honestly, the feeling I got while watching this movie was what I expected from what’s arguably the most over-hyped horror movie of all time, 1999’s The Blair Witch Project.

When I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theater, I was expecting to be scared in ways that I had been before. I know that a few of the friends I went with were terrified by it. I wondered if we had just watched the same movie. The Blair Witch Project is a different type of horror from A Nightmare on Elm Street. I think that perhaps as a 23-year-old, I hadn’t yet adapted to the idea that what you might imagine could be even more terrifying than what you see. I’ve mentioned on this blog a couple of times that I need to go back and watch The Blair Witch Project to see if I view it the same way that I did 16 years ago. Given its 87% “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m willing to admit that I am probably missing something when I give it a D-. But this is neither here nor there. It Follows is much more like The Blair Witch Project than A Nightmare on Elm Street. The movie’s 96% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes aligns with my view of the film. It Follows is an instant horror classic.

It’s hard to make an excellent horror film in this day and age. You have to do something special. It’s just really, really hard to scare people in new ways. There are so many great things about this movie. I loved its originality. I loved its tone. I loved the ever-looming mysterious score. But mostly, I loved how it played with my mind. The acting was serviceable, with the prominent members of the cast delivering their expected performances. They acted scared. The cast is full of no-name actors and actresses, and that is precisely what you want. The less you can identify with these people outside of this movie, the more natural these characters seem. I loved the very first scene of Scream, but I felt like something was lost when the woman on the phone in the empty house was Drew Barrymore (who I like a lot), but I couldn’t help thinking that this was the little girl from E.T. The more ordinary these characters were, the more realistic the story felt. And the story is neat. Ironically, there are a couple of tributes to the same Scream movie I just referenced.

I feel like director David Robert Mitchell (The Myth Of The American Sleepover) was influenced by components of Scream, including the film’s opening scene. I do not know if this movie influenced Mitchell, but it certainly seems possible. But there is certainly a massive difference between It Follows and Scream. Scream, while frightful and entertaining, poked fun at the horror genre. Since the master of terror, Wes Craven, created the franchise, I think Scream was better received than it might have been. Perhaps not.

The movie’s plot deals with a character who follows the lead character(s) around. This character (whom I’ll refer to as The Follower going forth) can take the appearance of any human form. The Follower has one goal. It needs to touch the afflicted person. Once the afflicted person is touched, they meet a very violent death. So how does one become afflicted, and what can be done once the affliction occurs? Well, to answer the first question, you inherit the disease when you sleep with someone infected. We are uncertain of how many people are infected. It may just be the inner circle that these characters are in. There is certainly no discussion among people outside of the small group about it. It’s almost as if this group of friends operates entirely independently of the rest of the world, which is just fine for a film like this. When you have sex with someone, you pass on the supernatural entity (The Follower) onto that person. The only way the newly infected person can pass it on is if they sleep with someone else. However, neither party is ever truly safe because if the person to whom it is passed gets killed, the person who had just passed it on is once again fair game. Keeping up? It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Just know that if you are a character that has this or has had this, your life might never be safe again.

So, as mentioned, if The Follower touches the afflicted person, a brutal death is forthcoming (which we don’t see…this is not a gory film). The good news is The Follower cannot go any faster than a determined walking pace. It cannot run. The bad news, though, is that The Follower always knows where you are, and it seems to have an uncanny ability to get into secluded places. The good news is that only the afflicted can see The Follower. This means that an afflicted person can ask their friends if they see the human form they believe could be The Follower. If they can, all is good; if they can’t, run like hell. The bad news is that only the afflicted person can see The Follower. So when it is there tormenting the afflicted person, their friends can only guess where this thing might be. It is essentially invisible to them.

The unknown actors in this movie are a group of friends and consist of the lead actress Jay (Maika Monroe – Labor Day, The Guest), her boyfriend Jeff (Jake Weary – Zombeavers), her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), and friends Paul (Keir Gilchrist – The Stanford Prison Experiment, Tales of Halloween) and Greg (Daniel Zovatto – Innocence, Beneath). Dozens of different people play the Follower. Sometimes the audience can spot The Follower right away, and at other times it appears when we are least expecting it. Mitchell does a great job of mixing in both. What makes this movie so freaky is the uncertainty involved with it all. This is not a movie about blood and gore, but rather one about dread and anxiety. You are never safe. You can never relax. You cannot make sense of what’s happening. And you have no way to stop any of it. And sometimes you are guessing who The Follower is, just like those characters in the movie that can see it.

And the score is killer (pardon the pun). It’s one of those scores that, in a lesser movie, would undoubtedly have come across as overbearing and premeditating. It wouldn’t have worked in a lesser film. But because It Follows has scared you as early as it does and captivated you as profoundly as it does, the score becomes as much of a character as The Follower itself.