‘It Follows’ successfully combines the best of horror genre

I don’t often get the chance to review horror films, mostly because few of them come out in the theater any given year, and those that do tend to be terrible. They have a penchant for recycling once-popular styles to the point of being boring and uninspired. It’s quite disappointing.

So, you can imagine my glee when I finished viewing “It Follows,” quite the unconventional horror film. For one, it’s rated R, which is pretty uncommon for horror these days, which tend to be PG-13 to appeal more broadly. For another, though, the movie returns to the films of old, deciding to traumatize psychologically rather than visually, reveling in the fear of the unknown rather than succumbing to jump scares or gratuitous gore. (You only can watch so many “Saw” or “Hostel” movies because you start feeling queasy.)

So, rather than taking the easy way out, director David Robert Mitchell (“The Myth of the American Sleepover”) takes inspiration from a film that hit the silver screen nearly 40 years, and a personal favorite of mine: “Halloween.” Mitchell utilizes the best of that John Carpenter classic, and in effect says “no thanks” to modern convention. For instance: nearly no random or useless jump scares, no fear of full-frontal nudity (of both sexes), no trying to tell us how something works that clearly isn’t part of this world. So don’t be surprised if you find yourself thinking you’ve been teleported back to the ’80s. (You can even find a landline phone!)

Click here to read the full review at TDN.com.

Four “I don’t think a condom protects against this” stars out of five, and a critic’s pick.

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Above, a scene from “It Follows.” (Photo credit: RADiUS-TWC)