How the Cinematography in ‘It Follows’ Trains You To Be Paranoid

Welcome to The Queue — your day by day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the net. At this time, we’re watching a video essay that explores how the cinematography in “It Follows” challenged slasher film conventions.

2014’s It Follows by no means hides the truth that its pursuits lie within the Nineteen Eighties; that its dialog accomplice is, before everything, the form of slashers that sacrifice sexual deviants and reward resilient virginity.

If the movie handed you by (or is gathering mud in your watchlist), right here’s the gist: after hooking up with date, Jay (Maika Monroe) finds herself the most recent sufferer of a horrifying illness. One thing is stalking her now. It will possibly seem like anyone. And it’s coming to kill her. So long as Jay retains transferring, she’ll be high quality. However when the creature retains clipping Jay’s heels, she and her buddies should discover a method to divert the curse to another person.

We may gladly spend all day itemizing the ways in which David Robert Mitchell’s movie challenges the conventions of the slasher movie. However as as we speak’s video essay notes, one of many movie’s most subtle twists on the style takes the form of one of many slasher’s least expensive tips: the bounce scare.

From using offscreen area to the subversion of what we’ve come to anticipate from “spatial penetration,” right here’s a video essay that examines the methods that prepare us to be paranoid relatively than shocked. Don’t overlook to look over your shoulder … you by no means know who’s behind you.

Watch “How Cinematography in It Follows (2014) Challenges Slasher Horror”

Who made this?

This video essay about how the cinematography of It Follows challenged slasher conventions is by Jordan Schonig, who holds a Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Research from the College of Chicago. They’re a Movie Research lecturer and make video essays on, what else, movie. You possibly can subscribe to Schonig on YouTube right here. And you may comply with them on Twitter here.

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Associated Subjects: Cinematography, Horror, It Follows, The Queue

Meg Shields is the common-or-garden farm boy of your desires and a senior contributor at Movie Faculty Rejects. She presently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She can be a curator for One Excellent Shot and a contract author for rent. Meg could be discovered screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter right here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).