It Follows

United States, 2015

Directed by David Robert Mitchell

Like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Final Destination, It Follows has a simple premise - one that is ridiculous but perfect for the horror genre, the kind of scary story that could be told around a campfire or at slumber parties. A strange curse is being passed around - if you have sex with a person who has It, something will start following you. Nobody else can see it but you. It takes different human forms, sometimes of people you know. It will always be walking towards you - slowly but inevitably. If it catches you, you're dead. You can pass it on by sleeping with somebody else, but if It catches them, It will just follow you again.

It's an absurd but catchy plot hook, and one that It Follows utilizes very cleverly. Though there are grotesque moments, director David Robert Mitchell shows restraint when it comes to violence and cheap "boo!" scares - It Follows draws most of its horror from the creeping tension inherent to its premise, the mystery of not knowing where or who It is, and of suddenly recognizing It moving inevitably towards you. Clever camerawork builds suspense - as in a rotating 360-degree shot, where with each rotation It grows steadily closer.

There's a very obvious metaphor to be found here, It as the embodiment of an STD. It Follows acknowledges this metaphor early on, but moves on quickly - It gains larger, vaguer meanings than just the menace of sexually transmitted disease.

It also represents anxieties about impending adulthood and the loss of childhood's safety and innocence. The characters of It Follows are unusually believable for the horror genre, which often casts 30 year old supermodels to play teenagers. They look and behave like real young adults, all reminiscent of people I knew in high school, with a convincing, low-key camaraderie among them. And all of them are adrift in a late adolescent limbo - still living with parents in their childhood homes, but facing the encroachment of dangerous adult responsibilities. Two characters play a "trading places" game while waiting in line for a movie - where they observe the strangers around them and pick who they would most like to trade lives with. The young man picks a little boy, because he still "has his whole life ahead of him". This sounds like a ridiculously melodramatic thing for a young person to say, but there's a relatable truth to it. Many stories show the exciting promise and freedom of being a young adult but It Follows explores the darker flip side. Emerging from the innocent bubble of childhood into adult knowledge can be dreadful - a new awareness of your fragile place in a sometimes scary world, with mortality creeping closer.

It Follows is set in Detroit, and Michigan native Mitchell makes the setting come to life in fascinating ways vital to the story. It's a dreamy vision of suburbia, with rows of houses tucked among dense, swaying foliage. The light is hazy, and the colors all pastel and soft. Whenever the characters make excursions outside of the suburbs into urban Detroit, the colors turn gray, and everything is harsh and ruinous. One character comments that she was never allowed to go beyond 8 Mile as a child into the big bad city, and she never realized until she was older what that meant. But even the safe zone of suburbia is crumbling in It Follows - the streets are eerily empty, and the old houses are beginning to decay.

Then there's the odd absence of parents. Adults are only glimpsed briefly in It Follows, and their lack of presence is pointedly intentional. We never see our main character Jay's mother clearly - her face is always just out of the picture or blurry, she always has a wine glass nearby, and Jay never goes to her for help or advice during her ordeal. Where Jay's father is, we don't know - but it's suggested that he is the final form It takes in the film, a storytelling decision that surely was not meaningless. These kids are on their own, and perhaps their entry in adulthood would not have been so treacherous if they had loving guidance from their elders.

It Follows never tells us what to think about these ideas, they remain haunting, unresolved undercurrents to a pretty terrific horror movie. It Follows is not perfect - it violates the rules it sets up several times, which is a storytelling pet peeve of mine. But it is a thoughtful, artfully-crafted gem in a genre that largely produces rubbish, and it gets so much just right. I dug its dreamy retro style, which is like a cross between Sofia Coppola and John Carpenter - and that score is seriously awesome.

Mad Max: Fury Road

United States / Australia, 2015
Directed by George Miller

Mad Max: Fury Road opens on a shot of a desert landscape, with a shocking contrast between the  scorched yellow-orange sand and the bright blue sky. A wildman stands alone in this wasteland, muttering about the voices of those he's lost "worming their way into the black matter of my brain". A two-headed mutant lizard scuttles past him - he crushes it with his boot and eats it alive.

From this cracked and crazy opening, Fury Road more than earns the word "mad" in its title. This movie is completely bonkers. With his original Mad Max films director George Miller essentially invented the post-apocalyptic genre as we know it today, with its heavy metal / punk stylings (or, as succinctly described in Spongebob: "Welcome to the apocalypse, Mr. Squidward...I hope you like leather"). With Fury Road, George Miller has been given a gargantuan budget to bring his mad vision to life on an epic scale, and the results are awe-inspiring. Fury Road is essentially a two-hour long chase scene, set in a breathtakingly detailed, truly mad apocalyptic world.

And what incredible chase scenes! The action in Fury Road is beautifully choreographed and executed - George Miller is a maestro of vehicular mayhem. Take this sequence as an example:

There are a lot of moving parts to this sequence, with our heroes in the "War Rig", Immortan Joe in pursuit, and a gang of motorcycle bandits on the attack. Yet the action never becomes chaotic or confusing - we always know where everyone is situated, what they are doing, and what the immediate dangers are. And all those crazy leaping motorcycles and explosions? They're real - it's actual stuntwork, not CGI. It's understandable why most action films create much of their action on computers, as it's easier and a hell of a lot safer, but CGI never holds the same impact (and the one scene in Mad Max that does use big special effects is, by a significant margin, the film's least engaging action sequence). There is a believable, brutal physicality to Fury Road that, when combined with impressive choreography and clean camerawork, makes for a terribly exciting, intense viewing experience. And believe it or not, that motorcycle chase is pretty sedate compared to the absolutely nuts action in the last act. Once our heroes are assaulted by a whole horde of lunatics in a caravan that is like a cross between an apocalyptic Cirque du Soleil and a metal concert on wheels, things get really crazy, but all the madness is executed with the same clarity and perfect timing.


The story is simple but engrossing. The lizard-eater of the opening sequence is Max, a hardened survivalist haunted by guilt. He is captured and taken to The Citadel, a community governed by the tyrannical Immortan Joe, who keeps the populace under control by creating a violent death cult in which he is the central figure. Max is used as a "blood bag" for Nux, one of Joe's War Boys, who are wasting away from the effects of radiation and need supplies of fresh blood to stay strong for battle. Here we meet the real protagonist of Fury Road - Imperator Furiosa, a former slave who drives the massive War Rig for Joe and his army. She deviates from her latest mission, escaping in the War Rig with five of Joe's concubines, or "breeders". Max and even the War Boy Nux become accomplices of Furiosa and the women - initially a hostile partnership borne of desperation, but mutual respect begins to grow in the ragtag group of escapees.

It's a basic story with a predictable arc, but set in a richly realized world of Miller's creation. Fury Road is the most immersive science fiction film I can recall since Children of Men nearly a decade ago. Like Children of Men, Fury Road never stops to explain to the audience the rules or history of its world - they are communicated through visual details, the language and customs of the characters. For all its outrageousness, the world of Fury Road feels lived-in and authentic, and holds relevance to ours. Immortan Joe's society is a religious cult that keeps the masses ignorant and does not tolerate any dissidents, that ensnares powerless young men by promising them glory in the afterlife if they die for their cause, and treats women as products to be controlled. That is hardly the stuff of fantasy - the Islamic State operates on largely the same principles.

The characters, too, are simple but drawn and performed with conviction. Tom Hardy's Max is gruff and near-silent - he grunts more than he speaks - but his development from a crazed survivalist to a man with actual concern for other lives is quietly moving. The women who escape with Furiosa have striking individual personalities, with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's Splendid Angharad, who is clearly the brave natural leader of the group, the quirky, eerie Dag (played by Abbey Lee), and the kindhearted Capable (Riley Keough) being particular standouts. Nicholas Hoult is brilliant as Nux, the initially scary-funny brainwashed War Boy who becomes brutally disillusioned of the Immortan Joe cult, and turns sympathetic as we realize he is, in a different way, as much an innocent victim as the women. But best in show is undeniably Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. Like Max, Furiosa doesn't speak much, but we understand all we need to through Theron's eyes - her grit and courage, her genuine care for her young stowaways, her quiet self-loathing and seething fury. Furiosa is a terrific character, played with subtlety and soul by Theron - an actress who is sometimes cast based on her blonde goddess beauty but actually excels when playing difficult, spiky characters. She's an action heroine comparable to the great Sigourney Weaver in Aliens.

Also like Aliens, Mad Max: Fury Road is an intense action masterpiece elevated by surprising tenderness. Because for all the carnage and grotesquerie on display, Mad Max: Fury Road is actually hopeful. I grew to care for this band of heroes and their fight for dignity in a mad world that robbed them of sanity and humanity. The acts of redemption and sacrifice at the film's end are sincerely heartfelt. Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment of Fury Road is its affirmation that subtlety and soul can co-exist with wild bombastic spectacle.

But if that doesn't interest you, the "wild bombastic spectacle" should be more than enough - there's even a giant truck carrying dreadlocked drummers and a warrior playing an electric guitar that's also a flamethrower, which is about the nerdiest, coolest thing I've ever seen.