Why Movies Like ‘It Follows’ Matter
It Follows has been out for a while now, but for some reason it has stuck with me.
Maybe it’s all the little tricks. The weird clam compact e-reader or the way multiple decades are all mashed together in continuous scenes. Your eye doesn’t realize it, not technically. It leaves you with an eerie feeling. But I don’t think the scenery or the technology is the only thing that gives off creepy and confusing vibes. There is something else.
It’s the message. The obvious one is the moral implications behind the contraction of an STD. That anyone could give it to you. It could be anyone you meet, at any time. The horror movie trope of sex=sin and death. But look deeper. This sin keeps following you. Your death is imminent. But could you have stopped it? If it could be anyone you meet, at any time, could you outrun death?
It’s not so much a warning about STDs. It’s not the idea that girls should not be sexually active, or shamed for it. It’s a deeper existential meaning. It’s saying everyone has sex. Everyone is alive. Everyone will eventually die.
Bleak, but then it makes you wonder about the other cliché movies. Were they saying you will pay for your sins or that everyone sins?