With 2015’s Box Office finally picking up with mainstream films attracting large audiences I took refuge in some smaller films (though they opened 10th and 8th respectively on Friday) before the summer blockbuster season properly opens on May 1 with Avengers: Age of Ultron. Friday night I caught Noah Baumbach’s latest film While We’re Young and then the new horror hit It Follows on Saturday. Pretty great filmgoing weekend if you ask me. Let’s consider those two in turn.
Noah Baumbach has been very consistent in giving us quality films with similar themes. Having become a darling of the indie circuit in 2005 with The Squid and The Whale and following it up with Margot at the Wedding, Greenburg, and Frances Ha he gives us another gem which we’ve come to expect each time out. The more serious spiritual cousin of Wes Anderson in terms of filmmaking Baumbach is able to show us real existential crises with relatable characters just trying to make it through life being content with their choices. Everyone, no matter their exterior, has uncertainty with aging. Everyone, as a line Ben Stiller delivers at the end of the film, is just pretending to be an adult. No one really knows how this is supposed to work, we just do our best each day with what we’re given. Ben Stiller is a veteran of these sort of films and is matched up with the younger and very much in demand Adam Driver. Driver plays a more driven version of his Girls character. In fact it seems like this film could occupy the same universe as that HBO series. The characters live in New York, the younger couple in Brooklyn, which always seems like a foreign place to me. The lifestyles are so different that while these people are my peers I feel like I have very little in common with them. I watch Girls almost as an anthropology lesson for how these people live than an actual half hour comedy show. Luckily the characters here are more relatable, this is due in large part to swift humor delivered by Stiller, Driver, Watts and Seyfried. With Driver coming into his own and soon to be a major star with his role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens coming and the others being established actors that are able to bridge comedy and drama effortlessly the funny moments give us real laughs and the heartfelt moments achieve what the director intends.
The trailer for the film shows us the main thrust of the film that involves the age gap between the characters and the older generation learning from the carefree creativity of the younger one while still accepting their desire to settle down. This is kept from being preachy with poignant and sharp dialogue. But what really surprised me was the secondary plot (which at more than a few times becomes primary) that is about the nature of documentary filmmaking. Stiller and Driver’s characters are documentarians and Stiller’s father in law in the film is a preeminent documentary filmmaker who receives a lifetime achievement award by films end. There are real discussion about what documentary is and the best way to go about it. This, of course, was right on point for me with name dropping of famous old filmmakers and their theories about what film should be. This is more than just lipservice. It seems Baumbach had a lot to get off his chest, not just with pointing the lens inward about aging, but also about film itself. Films about filmmaking are some of my favorites, and while it is radically different I couldn’t help but think about Fellini’s 8 1/2 while watching this.
I won’t go too much more into what makes While We’re Young a quality offering, but to say that it’s a safe bet that if you like indie films in general you will end up loving this movie. It checks off all the boxes that you expect and then delivers something unexpected that gives fans of film history that extra something. Even if you just like sharp dialogue and wry humor this is for you. Check it out.
While we’ve come to expect a certain level of excellence from Baumbach in his films, then it was even more rewarding to watch David Robert Mitchell’s sophomore offering It Follows (and what an amazingly suggestive title that is). This neo-classical horror film gives you the scares you want while also making you really think. It is a not so veiled parable about the anxiety of intimacy and sex at a young age as well as the uncertain danger of sexually transmitted diseases. If you say to yourself that those are too deep of subjects to tackle in what should be a fun horror movie then you’ve been missing quite a bit of subtext in the scary movies you’ve watched. Horror films are some of the most open in terms of showing us one thing while really being about something else underneath. Mitchell thankfully gives us a horror film that is full of the tropes and cliches of scary movies without being trite and without winking at the audience to get us to buy in. The tone of the film is incredibly consistent throughout with great acting from the lead Maika Monroe. The basic premise of the film is that there is something that can be passed along from a haunted person to another by having intercourse. Then a figure that no one else but the haunted can see slowly following behind to kill them. The figure took the embodiment of what appears to be sexually assaulted or sexual predators, but also at times looks like the characters friends and family. These offer some truly frightening moments, though if you are looking for jump in your seat horror you might need a more mainstream offering.
Mitchell is so confident in his camerawork with terrific 360 degree pans and tracking shots that the quieter moments with straight on photography and shots that linger are all the more powerful. The cinematography makes the characters more sympathetic and the scares real. This is a throwback to the horror of Carpenter and Romero, but is even more thought provoking to me as it makes the audience really ponder things with an honest exploration of sex. This is minimalist horror with a beautiful widescreen visual imagery. The characters rarely do something too stupid that makes the audience angry with them as is too often the case in contemporary horror films which I’ve come to hate. Horror films are so hard to get right that when we have one like this that doesn’t have other comedic elements and is a true throwback it is very special indeed.
The film’s internal logic is dreamlike in nature. The director has admitted that the film’s premise stems from dreams in his childhood about someone following him. We never know what causes the ‘It’, we never know why it follows, or how to defeat it. We never really resolve things in dreams and while final resolutions are rare in horror films because the director wants to leave you with a sense of dread as you leave the theater, resolutions are even more meaningless in a film like this. With a budget of $2 million and this getting critical accolades and having grossed $10 million already I think it’s pretty certain we’ll get a follow up to It Follows. And that’s not a bad thing. While many horror sequels have been real stinkers there are some series that continue to be rewarding. This is open ended and moody enough for another young filmmaker to take the reins and inject their own ideas.
The final thing to mention about the film is its terrific soundtrack. Synthesizers and variations on classic horror music themes from the late 70’s and 80’s are abound here with a score by Disasterpiece. This is a direct connection to how music is used in Drive and The Guest. In fact watching It Follows as a double feature with The Guest would be extra rewarding as it shares the same main actress. The score gives the cues for the scary bits, but also gives you time to contemplate and really is what sets the mood for the film. Without this score I don’t think the film works on the same level. It also helps with what is one of my favorite parts about the movie: the fact that you can’t really pin down when the movie exists. The cars are a bit older, there aren’t any cell phones, but the clothing is contemporary and a character uses a unique e-reader device. The film is set in the suburbs of Detroit and does take time to comment on what it means to live in that economically depressed part of the country and what suburb and city means to horror. If you like horror at all I think you’ll love this. If you have been hugely disappointed by the modern state of horror with torture porn and ideas being beaten to death then this will be even more rewarding for you. Run out and see this ASAP.
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