Suburban paranoia gets an anxious new neighbour in David Robert Mitchell’s stylishly mounted teen horror It Follows, which is essentially Nightmare on Elm Street dressed as a daydream. Here, the bored yet idyllic Sofia Coppola-esque teen experience turns petrifyingly caustic as a sexually-transmitted curse is out to paint the town red (literally).

Teen movie clichés aside, It Follows works best as a subtly devised allegory on youthful promiscuity where teen sexual liaisons devolve into a miasma of unseen psychosexual terrors. It doesn’t always say or show anything refreshing, but there’s enough bite and quiet poetry in Mitchell’s execution.

It Follows isn’t always as subversive as it wants to be, but Mitchell encapsulates teenage sexual paranoia with artfulness and sensitivity, told through the dynamics of Craven-Carpenter horror cinema.

RATING: 4/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Jake Weary, Daniel Zovatto, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe

DIRECTOR: David Robert Mitchell

WRITER: David Robert Mitchell 

SYNOPSIS: A young woman becomes plagued with strange visions and an inescapable sense that something is following her.