It Follows

[Punch]

http://www.avclub.com/article/david-robert-mitchell-his-striking-new-horror-film-216215 check out this interview

Sex and sexual trauma have long served as a subtext integrated into the grammar of nearly all slashers, but It Follows makes this issue central to both the effectiveness of its scares and the impact of its thematic content. Survivors of sexual assault can be haunted by fear, shame and guilt. For Jay, these enduring effects of her assault are given monstrous, corporeal form, and they follow her everywhere she goes. - http://socialistworker.org/2015/04/09/facing-our-monsters

this was the only analysis that went in depth with the sexual trauma angle that i could find its how i also saw the movie

[jenkins]

Mitchell's film, like last year's The Babadook, eschews neat answers to its crushing, impossible, thematic questions, and is both scarier and more politically interesting as a result. That mainstream commentators completely miss this only proves how deeply our societal aversion to discussing the topic ultimately runs.

what is that called? i think it's called a fallacy of composition. i have no aversion toward this theme and that's a crazy thing to say

i have an aversion to themes in general. as demonstrated by this movie and ex machina and my recent iv post. themes are for a classroom and all i want to do is live inside movies. hey, i can't make any of you like a movie i enjoyed because of how i felt while watching it, though i try, and you can't make me like a movie because of how the theme made you feel, though you can try

[polkablues]

i have an aversion to themes in general. as demonstrated by this movie and ex machina and my recent iv post. themes are for a classroom and all i want to do is live inside movies. hey, i can't make any of you like a movie i enjoyed because of how i felt while watching it, though i try, and you can't make me like a movie because of how the theme made you feel, though you can try

I feel the complete opposite. Theme is everything when it comes to storytelling. Any time a film has made you feel something, it has been because of themes that resonated with you. Every great character, every great piece of dialogue, every great scene, sequence, set-piece, everything exists to serve the themes, and it's only by the relatability of those themes and their consistency within the narrative that we get what we get out of a film. Analyzing themes may be for the classroom (debatable), but experiencing them is the most primal and human thing we do with story.

[jenkins]

yes i know you're the complete opposite! but i know we'll dance together in the future. i don't think theme is everything because i don't think storytelling is everything. i think storytelling gets dangerous, i do, because i don't think it's healthy to imagine our lives in storyform or ourselves as omniscient narrators. and i'd say resonation can exist subtheme (or supertheme, hmmmm) and a story that culminates in a theme is a message movie. the messages of it follows and ex machina didn't control the experience i had with those movies. it's not primal enough? i mean that sounds harsh. it didn't click with me and you don't marry everyone you meet

[polkablues]

All narrative art is storytelling, though. Even Stan Brakhage at his most avant-garde was engaging in storytelling, just in a deconstructed, abstract way, like what Rothko's art was to portrait painting. Humans are wired to find cause, effect, and meaning in everything they experience. And that's all story is: cause, effect, and meaning.

Of course some things will click with you and other won't. Everyone has different tastes, different experiences, different contexts... I would just argue, and continue to argue on and on ad nauseum, that it's precisely the theme, the meaning, of the work that you're clicking with or not. Whether it resonates or not is dependent on your individual relationship to the themes at play, and your conscious or subconscious perceptions of how well the film illuminates them, but I don't believe you're experiencing anything sub- or super-thematically. Theme exists within all aspects of story, and story exists within all narrative art.

It seems like what you're reacting most strongly against is when films explicate their themes too brazenly, and that's a totally valid stance, which I completely agree with unless it's done particularly well, which I personally judge It Follows and Ex Machina to have done. Shouting your themes through a bullhorn is a risky maneuver, and I understand if some people will, as a matter of course, object to being shouted at.

[jenkins]

i said i don't think storytelling is everything. i'm not talking about throwing stories or themes out the window, although i do think i sound a bit that way, and i think you had a pinpoint reading about my problems with these two movies we're talking about, but i'm saying those elements tend to guide the movie without guiding me, and i think there's ample evidence of me expressing this perspective. you're saying you can't believe how i watch a movie, and the way you watch a movie envelops the all and everything. well that's something. i can remember people's faces and the way their hands move and if a background character opened a door in a funny way, and i can value those things as much as the all and everything happening, i don't know what to tell you. it isn't the story, it isn't the theme, it's the existence of the movie itself that most penetrates me. that sounds sexual. perfect

you made a fine and graceful post though, and i think if this conversation was taken to the long haul it'd become even more apparent how the very qualities you're appreciating can elevate the overall movie. for sure

[Tictacbk]

If storytelling and themes are so unimportant how come you give them so much power when it comes to ruining a film for you?

[jenkins]

...because i have an aversion to them, it's the first thing i said. to say it another way, which i've also said before, there's nothing i like less than being able to see gears turning

a defense of storytelling and themes is a cake-walk. no, i think a defense of storytelling and themes makes a cake-walk look difficult. of course you guys can stand by its side, and of course you'll have your supporters, but you'll just be singing the same song that's always sung. if that's what you want to sing, sing it, and i'll sing my own song

[Alexandro]

damn, what a fucking drag. as I get older, and watching movies becomes difficult because of work, kids, responsibilities; I get more and more pissed when I realize half way through that some film I'm seeing is not going to cut the mustard.

about the moment when the girl runs out of the house to the park at night I felt this was probably going to suck and it just kept getting more boring and repetitive. hate to see it being compared with the babadook, which was fucking INSANE and tense and scary most of the time. yeah, I hate jump scares and all those horror movie cliches. and perhaps this film biggest achievement is being the quietest horror film in many years. but there was nothing to care about.

[BB]

Late to the game, stirring the pot

SPOILERS

It's like a motion picture tumblr.

That's right. That's exactly right. And sometimes cool shit is enough. Should be enough, even. Garden State wasn't cool. Drive was cool. Drive's still cool enough.

It Follows would've been cooler if It moved slowly the whole time; we never actually saw what It does; the one It wasn't peeing; the pool scene was something else; and It wasn't a tangible physical entity, capable of interacting with objects (save doors and windows) and suffering harm.

Still, it was pretty cool.

A couple years ago kids would've said you guys have no chill.

[jenkins]

a couple years ago kids watching movies felt chill watching his previous movie The Myth of the American Sleepover.

[BB]

Which I should revisit in light of this one being pretty cool. I did not like it at all the first time around. Perhaps I am the one without chill.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Just watched this. I completely understand why it's divisive, but I fall decidedly on the pro side. I wasn't quite sure why I liked it, honestly. Then coming back here and reading Polka's reviews crystallized my feelings.

Expectations are important. I'm not sure this is even a horror movie. I guess I understand the urge to get fixated on the monster, as it were, but I'm puzzled why people got so caught up with the mechanics of It. That's the least interesting conversation you can have about this movie. (And obviously the kids were just trying whatever, because they had no idea what to do.)

I appreciate how little the movie gives you. Entire scenes seem to be missing. That enhances the effect of disorientation and really captures the feeling of being a teenager, when you have these horrifying realizations that you don't actually understand how the world operates.

[jenkins]

I appreciate how little the movie gives you. Entire scenes seem to be missing. That enhances the effect of disorientation and really captures the feeling of being a teenager, when you have these horrifying realizations that you don't actually understand how the world operates.

(it's over a year a half since i saw It Follows once, and whatever the conversations have been i've forgotten the movie anyway, so that's my final opinion)