ST:
We’ll leave aside the fact that I’m pretty studiously avoiding talking about
poetry at all, with a couple of lapses, for this new iteration of Gists and Piths – read into that what
you will – and move, slowly but determinedly, to the topic of horror (not that
far removed from poetry, all things considered). The other weekend when you were away, my
teenage self decided to crash my brain, and took me on a three-part horror
jaunt (although the chosen movies were of a decidedly classier calibre than I
would have favoured when I was actually
sixteen, rather than a thirty six year old playing host to a spotty,
recalcitrant neurological revenant), which started with The Witch, took in The
Babadook, and landed with a soft, kitteny thump upon It Follows, which proved the strongest, certainly the oddest and
least easily parsed of the three. Having
nudged you into watching it too, chiefly so I could have someone to talk to
about it, I thought it germane to have our promised conversation in a digitised
public place. You know, because. It should go without saying, by the way, that
there will be MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD, so anyone who’s reading but who is yet to
see It Follows, please do, partly
because our ramblings will be more coherent and (hopefully) more rewarding once
you have, but chiefly because I think it’s a genuinely excellent film,
regardless of its position within the genre.
Which brings me to
the first point of order: genre. All the
films I’ve mentioned above take a somewhat oblique approach to the process of
scaring the audience witless: in some regards (this is particularly true of The
Witch, which for all its strengths never quite rose above the level of an
academic exercise), they’re almost running parallel with their chosen genre, commenting
on horror as a form and as a strategy as much as they’re setting out to
terrify. This might be a sign of aging
on my part – the more overt horror that seems to dominate the stage at the moment doesn’t
really hold any interest for me, and in many instances feels actively repellent
– or that the form’s entered a kind of post-post-modern phase: having got through
the hyper-referentiality of the Scream
series, the best work in the field’s going to start mutating and absorbing
other genres and modes, like New Wave science fiction did in the 60s and
70s.
RS: OK: first of all, the phrase “soft, kitteny thump”
brings me out in a cold sweat (thanks M.R. James),
but involuntary nervous reactions aside, I know what you mean about the whole
genre issue. It Follows reminded me of the creature from John Carpenter’s The Thing, in that it was constantly mimicking
other forms that were partially recognisable, but somehow not quite right.
About halfway through the film I realised that the It Follows creature (not sure what else to call it) seemed to be
morphing between several different but familiar horror figures, like the
Guillermo Del Toro-inspired lanky bastard or that terrifying kid who pulled the
classic crawl move from The Ring (it
was through a door not a TV screen, but even so). But it was more than just flicking through the
archetypes of horror, because the inconsistency of the It Follows creature (sometimes it’s someone you know, sometimes
it’s not) allowed the whole narrative structure of the film to keep
incorporating different genres as it went along. It seemed as though there were several films
overlaid here and they just took it in turns to rise to the top of the pile. Does that make sense?
ST: Yes, it does, and that sense of uncertainty, of
wooziness, is what accounts I think for the interest the film holds. It is genuinely unlike anything I’ve seen in
the field for some time, suggesting a non-linear kind of thinking quite at odds
with the more obviously scare-inducing fare that grabs the majority of the
headlines (just off the top of my head: the found-footage thang, the post-Hostel demi-snuff nonsense, and the
diminishing returns on the unstoppable wraith motif that Hideo Nakata and his
peers do really well, but the Americans just can’t seem to get right, It Follows being a notable exception). Stephen King’s really useful here, and if
you’ve not read it, I’d recommend Danse
Macabre as the gold standard in critical writing on horror. It’s been a while since I’ve perused it, but
from what I remember King distinguishes between three tiers in horror writing: outright
terror, plain horror and homely disgust.
The brass ring for the horror writer is terror, a heightened emotion or
set of emotions not all that far removed from the Burkean sublime, but without the
unnecessary appendage of beauty; horror, which is the next step down, and
suggests cruder methods and effects (a thing pops out of a cupboard; a talking
doll comes charging down a hospital corridor with a knife clamped between its teeth; something in that
line, anyway); whilst disgust is the cheapest trick in the horror toolbox, in
King’s schema. It Follows feels like such an oddity because it doesn’t seem
particularly interested in doing any
of those things, least of all the last element in King’s triad of fear. What it is interested in doing is inducing an
advanced state of paranoia in the audience.
The basic premise – that something terrible is coming, at a walking
pace, and won’t stop till it’s nailed you: a very M R James narrative trope, it’s
worth noting – coupled to the way the movie’s filmed (lots and lots and lots of
wide shots, often using a panoramic camera which roves dispassionately around the
landscape: James again, this time the BBC adaptations of his work in the 60s
and 70s) means the viewer’s pretty much permanently on guard for any unexpected
movement at the outer edges of the frame.
Is that the thing, or is it just a
guy out for a stroll? Do I detect motion
behind that tree, that hedge, or is my mind playing tricks again? It’s monstrously immersive as a viewing
experience in that regard: the viewer’s no kind of passive receiver of images
and narrative jolts, but becomes, through a steady but relentless process, an
active, unwilling participant in events.
Which is what any horror film is really aiming at, but It Follows is particularly good –
because particularly ruthless – at achieving it.
 |
| Still from 'A Warning to the Curious', dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972 |
RS: Isn’t this where the comparison to The Shining comes in? Both films have that same refusal to provide
answers and that same feeling that what you’re seeing is just the outward edge
of something much deeper and more complex. There’s a peculiar cleanness to the horror in
both films, because in each case the viewer isn’t just implicated in the events
but actually feels part of them. Both
films seem to invoke a particular state of mind, not just paranoia but the
eerie feeling that these terrible events can happen in the most mundane of
environments, and that perhaps such occurrences are perpetually in play, it’s
just that the rest of us can’t see them. Then everything becomes horrifying, not just
the movements you think you see at the edge of the frame, but every little
detail of the house and the street and the town where this is taking place. It all suggests an unwillingness or an
inability to see what is going on right in front of us, which might be one of
the reasons why this film seems to be an uncomfortable fit within the standard
definition of horror. It Follows seems most
interested in that question of complicity rather than the expected ideas of
what is or isn’t terrifying.
ST: It’s interesting that you mention The Shining. You’re right to say that both Kubrick’s film
and It Follows are intensely
interested and involved in the mental states of the characters onscreen – in
the case of The Shining, this is
taken to an almost abstract extreme – but they’re both also equally involved in
matters of looking, of seeing (which I suppose is an extension
of their interest in psychology). The
camera in The Shining has a habit of
showing its characters’ reactions to horror before revealing the event or
object that’s induced the horror in the first place, which is partly a cheeky short-cut
to heightening the horror and tension that the audience is already feeling, but
it also highlights the fact that Kubrick’s more interested in the mechanics and
metaphysics of horror than he is in its narrative possibilities. It
Follows has a similar approach, though the director David Robert Mitchell
plays through more variants on the theme than Kubrick: we get the classic
Kubrickian response-horror-response rhythm, sure, but also quite a few false
scares, characters looking over their shoulders, or simply describing things
that the audience themselves can’t see.
In terms of the notion of complicity, It Follows is definitely a follower – ha! – of Hitchcock in this
regard: the camera operates for the most part in an eerily dispassionate, voyeuristic,
uncharacterised way, and only focuses its gaze when ‘looking’ through the eyes
of particular characters. For example,
given this is a movie with a cast of teenage characters that revolves around
the twin poles of terror and sex, the camera steers clear of leering or
objectifying; this only occurs through the eyes of one character, Greg, who’s a
bit of a douchebag, and is certainly revealed to have a less than respectful
attitude to women as the narrative progresses.
The way ‘Greg’s’ eyes linger on his female friends, then, feels less like
a capitulation to those genre expectations, and more like an explicit critique
of them.
RS: I agree that
Greg is something of a sleaze, but isn’t it interesting how the viewer is
pushed towards seeing his fate as somehow justified, when Paul’s response to
the same situation is so much worse?
Greg doesn’t really believe that the threat is real, so he’s just guilty
of being an opportunist perv at worst.
But Paul knows it’s real and his actions mean consciously sacrificing
sex workers to protect himself and the girl he loves. That’s what I meant about the audience being
complicit – we like the protagonists and want them to survive, but that means
watching them push other, entirely blameless but unknown individuals under the
proverbial bus. That’s why when you asked whether or not I thought that the
film ended on an optimistic note I said no, because their safety can only be
bought by putting other people directly in the line of fire.
 |
| Late Gothic: It Follows |
ST: That’s rather a bleak analysis, but I would
agree. Moreover, the premise – that
someone’s happiness is always dependent on someone else’s misery and suffering
– speaks directly to the film’s other undercurrent: class. It
Follows seems to make a point of different time frames coexisting
impossibly. Ostensibly, the film is set
in the present day, although the accoutrements of the contemporary world we’ve
all grown to know and love are conspicuous through their absence (the only up
to the minute technology – Yara’s ever-represent clamshell e-reader – is, it’s
worth noting, a complete fabrication).
Elsewhere, the tech on display favours the redundant and vintage – big
cathode ray tube televisions (complete with bunny ear aerials) from at least
the 80s, possibly earlier; household Bakelite telephones with cords (cords!),
electric typewriters, classic cars – as do the cultural products that pop up
throughout the movie. The televisions in
question seem to be showing an endless loop of 50s schlock science fiction
(complete with Wilhelm screams whenever a monster gets iced);
kids these days apparently go on dates to see Charade (Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, 1963)* at a very, very old
school cinema that looks as though it’s not been refitted since the 30s; and
the absence of contemporary pop music on the soundtrack only exacerbates the
sense of woozy, temporal dislocation induced by Rich Vreeland’s fantastic
score.** This is really just a
background, though, to the more unsettling juxtaposition that the film enacts
between the perfectly manicured lawns and houses of the suburbs where the kids
reside, and the haunted, recession-hit desolation of the city proper (It Follows is set in Detroit). These are literally two worlds co-existing
in uneasy parallel, barely or rarely meeting: this is segregation enacted at an
architectural level, a segregation brought home by the closing moments of the
film, as Paul crosses to the wrong side of the tracks to pass the curse onto
sex workers who are, according to the social schema of this world, essentially
expendable. That this kind of social
disjunction continues to exist, and has always existed, is a far more
horrifying possibility than a sexually-transmitted haunting, right?
RS: Absolutely,
but then the film is in danger of working itself into a metaphysical corner on
this. In a way, the whole haunting side
of it is a distraction from these far broader concerns about social inequality
and the prevalence of sexual violence, and there is the chance that the viewer
gets completely drawn into the supernatural element without getting the space
to think about the underlying observations that the film is making. Part of that weird wooziness you mentioned is that there seem to be two films here, one that’s about a sexually-transmitted succubus and another that’s about social and familial breakdown. Not that a horror film can’t comment on other, wider issues, but it’s a tricky move to get right and three-dimensional character development is usually sacrificed in favour of flinging further blood and guts up the walls. That said, It Follows is a rare beast in that it successfully manages the tension between these two different layers of the narrative, so that the viewer can toggle between them at will. All those dreamy driving sequences create the perfect space in which to open up the broader social discussion without overloading the central characters or wrecking the pace. In fact, the scenes with the most weight in that respect are the ones without dialogue, where the audience is just left to observe and make the connections for themselves. This might be one of the reasons why I enjoyed It Follows so much: it credits its viewers with enough smarts to deal with unanswered questions and to engage with those quiet points of reflection. Plus it made me want to watch The Shining again, which can only ever be an excellent idea.
=====
*
NB: it’s worth noting that Charade’s
not just a neat metonym for ‘pastness’, but also a nod in the direction of It
Follow’s own narrative turn, as its own plot revolves around pursuit, deception
and murder as well. [ST]
**
The film doesn’t just blur the boundaries between eras, though: it’s also
impossible to judge the season in which It
Follows takes place (the regular visual refrain of leaf-raking suggests
autumn or early winter, but the characters also spend a great deal of time
hanging around in open-air pools, and at one point it’s warm enough for Jay,
the protagonist, to fall asleep sans blanket on the hood of her car, which to my
mind doesn’t seem like a particularly viable scenario in the midst of a Michigan November);
and at points, even judging the time of day’s a little squiffy. Mitchell seems interested, then, in
subconsciously disturbing us before the consciously disturbing stuff even begins to happen, to the extent
that the whole narrative seems to be taking place in a borderland between
waking and sleeping, populated with enough of the accoutrements of the known,
real world to be recognisable, but undermining that realism with something decidedly
other and uncanny. Surrealist, if you will. [ST]
 |
| Magritte, 'Empire of Light' |
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