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The Long Version: this review will contain spoilers so if you don�t want to be spoiled, stop reading.
Now.
The Good: It Follows is a highly professional movie. Director David Robert Mitchell is obviously a fan of John Carpenter�s Halloween, which serves as a template for It Follows. Like Carpenter, Mitchell favors long takes and tracking shots, uses darkest suburbia as a backdrop and sets it all to an excellent synth score. No shaky cam, no ADD editing, Mitchell knows when to move his camera and when not to and lets his actors, well act.
And his cast is pitch perfect and believable as teens solo-navigating the final years between childhood and adulthood. (There are almost no adults in this film. When they appear it is only briefly.) Maika Monroe as Jay, the girl pursued by the entity, is particularly good making her character very real.
However, that does not mean her character is really interesting.
The Bad: Mitchell learned a lot about movie making from Carpenter but one aspect he neglected: creating characters you care about. Jay and her friends are as flat as day old beer.
In Halloween the characters of Laurie, Annie and Lynda are interesting and dynamic and thanks to the talents of Curtis, Loomis and Soles, respectively, become people of flesh and blood – particularly blood � instead of horror films archetypes: the good girl, the smart ass, the sex bomb.
That vitality of character is missing in It Follows. Everyone acts as though they�ve just awoken from anesthesia. There is a lack of urgency in whatever these kids do; they sit instead of commit. (Mostly watching old movies on old TV sets, playing Old Maid and waiting for the inevitable to arrive.)
For example, after learning It can be hurt and has no magic powers – a strong door can stop it or at least slow it down � our meddling kids do little with that information other than Jay learning to use a revolver and their traveling to a remote beach house. (Yes, they go to a Cabin in the Woods.) Any advantage that tactical decision confers is undermined with their total lack of situational awareness, which allows It to get Its hands on Jay.
No one asks some obvious questions: can you trap or imprison It and if you do can It escape? Is Its supply of shapes endless? How did Hugh, who passed the curse to Jay, learn the rules by which It operates? (Hugh received the curse from a one-night stand, a woman he never saw again.) Where then did he get his information?
And when the Scooby Gang comes up with a �plan,� really more of a poorly thought out notion, – lure It into a large swimming pool � the plan fails, in part because they didn�t know or read the UL warning present on electronic devices – that they shut off when they come in contact with water, thanks to Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters. (Also fresh water is a relatively poor conductor of electricity.)
It�s bad writing when in order to advance a movie you make your characters stupid, un-inquisitive or un-motived. (I�d like to think most people reading this forum would turn over every rock trying to find a way to defeat It and failing that throw every rock they can find to kill It.)
Mitchell has Carpenter�s technical talent, but not his way of creating interesting characters. (There�s no Laurie, or Loomis or Snake or Maggie or MacReady in this film.)
The Ugly: The collapse of Detroit. Great back drops for a film, sad to see once beautiful homes and neighborhoods decay.
The Wrap: It Follows is not the game changer critics would have you believe. However, if you keep your expectations in check and like your films full of dread instead of red, It Follows delivers.