This article discusses plot details of It Follows.
In his recent interview with Vulture, Quentin Tarantino acknowledged that David Robert Mitchell’s indie horror darling It Follows is quite impressive, but like many things that Tarantino encounters, he’s still mad at it.
The writer-director said that It Follows is “one of those movies that’s so good that you start getting mad at it for not being great.”
Tarantino explained further:
[Mitchell] broke his mythology left, right, and center. We see how the bad guys are: They’re never casual. They’re never just hanging around. They’ve always got that one look, and they always just progressively move toward you. Yet in the movie theater, the guy thinks he sees the woman in the yellow dress, and the girl goes, “What woman?” Then he realizes that it’s the follower. So he doesn’t realize it’s the follower upon just looking at her? She’s just standing in the doorway of the theater, smiling at him, and he doesn’t immediately notice her? You would think that he, of anybody, would know how to spot those things as soon as possible. We spotted them among the extras.
And further:
The movie keeps on doing things like that, not holding on to the rules that it sets up. Like, okay, you can shoot the bad guys in the head, but that just works for ten seconds? Well, that doesn’t make any fucking sense. What’s up with that? And then, all of a sudden, the things are aggressive and they’re picking up appliances and throwing them at people? Now they’re strategizing? That’s never been part of it before. I don’t buy that the thing is getting clever when they lower him into the pool. [It’s] not clever.
And further:
Also, there’s the gorgeously handsome geeky boy—and everyone’s supposed to be ignoring that he’s gorgeous, because that’s what you do in movies—that kid obviously has no problem having sex with her and putting the thing on his trail. He’s completely down with that idea. So wouldn’t it have been a good idea for her to fuck that guy before she went into the pool, so then at least two people could see the thing? It’s not like she’d have been tricking him into it. It’s what I would’ve done.
Sure, some of these things might sound like nitpicks, but isn’t nitpicking how we distinguish great movies from really good ones? We’re sure that someone will develop a comprehensive response that refutes all of his points in good time. For now, Mitchell’s comments to Collider back in the spring address at least some of Tarantino’s gripes:
There’s a difference between the way I see it and the character’s interpretation of the events, so the rules within the film are the rules within the film. This is kind of a bit of a nitpicky distinction, but we understand what this monster is through one of the characters and he gives these rules to another character, but those rules are just things that he has figured out based on his own experiences and what he’s seen, and maybe what he’s heard from someone else – but unlikely if you hear the way he received it, if that’s true. And so, they’re not so much my rules. They’re this guy’s rules and he’s probably mostly right, but there’s a question of how accurate even he is.
[via Collider]