I'm Not Following

IT FOLLOWS (C) - Numbed by the eight or nine previews of impending horror movies at the cineplex, including two pointless remakes (the CGI'ing of the '80s continues), I had a sinking feeling inside: Why did I come to a horror film? I'd had luck a few months ago with "The Babadook." Alas, my lucky streak ended at one.

"It Follows" comes from writer/director David Robert Mitchell, who wowed us last time out with his 2011 debut "The Myth of the American Sleepover." This one is more of an American Sleepwalker. It follows a group of apparent college-age young adults (though they look and act like high school sophomores) in a variation on the classic "Halloween" theme of "You fuck, you die," wherein individuals are haunted by ghoulish figures who follow them around, and the only way to get rid of them is to have sex with someone else, thereby transferring it to them like a venereal disease. If they don't then have sex with another and pass it on and are instead killed by the freakazoids, then the plague returns to you.

That sounds like the shell of an idea for a movie. Needs salt, or something. And this whole film plays out hollowly and somnambulistically, with cute blond Jay (Maika Monroe) moping around with her pals after losing a game of Tag, You're It in the backseat of some scruffy dude's old car. She likes to float in a backyard pool, where (apparent) actual neighbor boys like to spy on her. Her friends help her fight off the occasional zombie attack. Then the whole thing comes to a climax in a big public swimming pool, for some reason. (If you are ever plagued by the living dead, try something stronger than a toaster.)

The movie crawwwwls at 100 minutes; it probably would make a fine 20-minute short film. It also seems to be set in the past, but that's not clear. The cars are ancient (a station wagon!), the TVs are fat, and the leg-warmers have Froot-Loop stripes. No one has a cell phone. However, one character has a compact-sized clam-shell device on which she reads Dostoevsky. It's all rather annoying.

No one in the cast stands out, including Monroe, who struggles to carry Jamie Lee Curtis' water. Keir Gilchrist plays nerdy Paul, who pines for Jay but also once kissed (scandal!) her sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). Gilchrist was delightful in "It's Kind of a Funny Story" a few years ago, but here, like everyone around him (including the undead), he's stumbling along trying to find any kind of story.

My best guess at what Mitchell is going for here: The story is set in suburban Detroit, and the kids mention at one point that more than one set of parents warned them about going into the city. Mitchell's camera lingers over the blight of Detroit, at times luridly. Is this about payback for white flight? Is it merely a weak metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases? In any event, pick up the pace, people.