We at THN love a good horror film and are beyond excited that IT FOLLOWS is released this week. The film is a master-stroke for the – lets face it – rather stagnant genre and actually manages to be chilling and creepy. The story tells of Detroit dwelling teenager Jay (Maika Monroe) who, after sleeping with her new boyfriend, finds herself stalked by a relentless being. The story is the brainchild of writer/director David Robert Mitchell. Shockingly IT FOLLOWS is only his second feature.
Ahead of the release we caught up with cast member Daniel Zovatto (his interview is here in case you missed it) and director David Robert Mitchell. We thoroughly enjoyed our chat with Mitchell as we reminisced about the films of our youth, the logistics of the surprise scare, and how to write a good script.
*The below interview may contain some spoilers to events in the film but don’t worry, we’ve highlighted which ones those are, so if you want the film to remain a surprise, skip past those parts*
THN: Firstly, congratulations on making a horror film that actually manages to be scary – it got me and it’s been a while.
DAVID ROBERT MITCHELL: Yeah? I’m not too scared any more by too many things. I definitely was freaked out by stuff as a kid, constantly; not as much as an adult. I like to feel that.
I spent the journey home constantly looking behind me.
Really? Oh wow, that’s cool. The last time I felt I kinda had that feeling, not a horror movie in that sense, but a movie that I absolutely love was ZODIAC. I remember leaving there, the theatre, at night and it definitely got to me. It sort of put me in another space. Which is cool, but also very uncomfortable.
It also managed to make me jump which horror films don’t usually do – the basketball though…
(Laughs)
…Made the heart hurt a little.
(Continues laughing) That’s good. I always feel a little guilty about that one, maybe I’ve done too cheap of a scare with it coming out of nowhere, but I liked that one as well. That one seems to get people.
For those that don’t know, what is the premise of IT FOLLOWS?
Basically this young woman, Jay, after sleeping with this guy that she’s recently started dating starts to feel as though something’s following her. Something is terribly wrong. It’s about how she deals with it, what happens after that.
Where did the idea come from?
It was the basic idea of being followed by something that looks like different people that is always slowly walking towards you was a recurring nightmare I had as a kid. I was maybe nine or ten and I just always remembered that feeling, that anxiety, that dread from within that dream, and some of the images from the dream. I’ve always remembered it and when I sat down and started writing a horror film I thought of that, and then I added the sexual aspect and other elements to it.
What’s your writing process?
It’s always a little different depending on what I’m working on. For the most part I clear a chunk of time where I don’t have to do anything or go anywhere and I just sit at the computer and drink coffee and put everything down on the page. With IT FOLLOWS I wrote very quickly because I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the back of my head for a long time. There was a period when I was writing a lot and I was like “I’m going to write this one, and this one”, I wrote a few other bits that I had had in my head for a bit, I mean I probably wrote it [IT FOLLOWS] in about a week and a half or so, I mean the first draft. I would revise and do some work on it after. It’s really just about setting aside time. Sometimes there’s a much more detailed outlining process and it just depends on the project. Sometimes the whole thing just comes to me very quickly; I’ll literally be doing something else but the story’s there in my head and wasn’t before. Other times I build it as I write it.
What directors did you admire growing up?
A ton, as a kid – a lot of the film makers I loved when I was young are still people that I really love. My dad and I would watch every Hitchcock movie when I was a kid, REAR WINDOW is like my favourite movie of all time. I can watch that movie like every month. So I still love those films. I loved a lot of the Truffaut films, I loved Speilberg movies like ET, I was sort of obsessed over ET. That’s the stuff I liked as a kid.
Hated E.T, it really scared me.
You know what, some of it is [really scary]. The cornfield sequence scared me as well. But I loved the movie, it’s very sad.
The last year has seen some incredibly imaginative horror films released; THE BABADOOK, STARRY EYES and IT FOLLOWS. What is it about the current climate that means that these films are coming through?
I don’t know, I mean I’m not sure. I can only speak for myself and it’s just that that’s the kind of film that I like and was interested in doing. Clearly there are other people that feel that way, in that those are the films that they looked to. I just wanted to try and make the kind of horror film that I would want to see. I was definitely inspired by a lot of the classics and there’s probably a lot of filmmakers that feel that way. As for it being a change, or a movement, I don’t know. It could be a coincidence of several people at a certain point, or it could be a whole movement, I have no idea. It’s hard to know. It could be in the sense that if people enjoy these kinds of films then there’ll be other people that will do their version. Probably at the end of the day it will come down to whether or not people go see these films. Honestly how many people go see them and whether they make money. That’s probably what it comes down to.
How did you get your cast together?
We had a casting director in LA, so through the casting director, we auditioned people mostly from LA and New York, we had some people from Detroit, where we filmed. We were just looking for the strongest actors that I felt would have that right amount of chemistry between them. To create that little family unit. That little gang of friends, so we are looking for that and really creating strong performances. Maika, for Jay, it was about looking for someone who could carry the film. You needed to be a certain level of vulnerability as well as strength – she has that.
I noticed a few nods to some classic films, were these intentional?
Some of it is, some of it isn’t. Because I love them so much and I’ve seen them so many times probably some of that just came out naturally. Some of it is conscious, some of it is on some other level. There’s ones I know where it’s a specific reference. The pool is definitely a reference to CAT PEOPLE. A lot of people see the Carpenter influence, I definitely love Carpenter; I’ve seen HALLOWEEN and his remake of THE THING a million times. I like his composition and blocking, and so that comes out for sure. Not so much a specific moment where I’m saying this is a Carpenter shot but I love his stuff, and Cronenberg and De Palma and Hitchcock, and on and on. I think some of that comes out because I love that stuff.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Whenever ‘It’ is seen it is either naked or white. Were there any specific intentions behind these choices?
Yeah, I think you often see it that way, but it could be other things. There is a reference to it being, we don’t see, but there is a different colour at a certain point but we’re not privy. I think that there’s the idea that it’s at some point trying to shock the person, that it’s about doing things that make that person uncomfortable in some way. It’s about being confrontational. Other times it’s about blending in and maybe we don’t see as much of that but it can do all of these things.
Let’s pretend that ‘It’ is real. It’s passed on to you, what do you do?
Well I think that that’s a tough situation to be in. What do I do? I probably die quite quickly.
We spoke to Danny before and he’s going to China.
You could. What you could do is try and if you had enough money you could travel and you could fly all over the world and try and stay away from it. The problem is at some point if you lose track of it…You could live a very long life if you had enough money and you could avoid it. There’s always the idea though of where is this thing? If you don’t know then there’s still that fear. It’s not so much about it catching you, it’s about the idea that it’s always following you. To me that’s what really is terrible and the real horror of the film. It is about being followed, it’s not just about being caught. Being caught you know is death, again this goes back to the fact that we are all dealing with our mortality. We’re here for a limited amount of time and we don’t know how long. It’s not so much about the end result, it’s about the experience in between and if that’s what you’re doing then that’s pretty rough.
Can we expect a sequel/prequel that explains more about ‘It’?
I don’t know. I’m not sure. It definitely won’t be the next thing that I’m doing. At least I don’t think so. If I were to do anything with this again I think it’s unlikely that I would want to explain ‘It’. I’m not so much interested in the origin as, to me, it’s a nightmare and to explain the logic of a nightmare defeats the point of a nightmare, at least with this film. If I were to ever explore anything in this world again it would probably not [be that], but who knows.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
I have a few things. It’s hard to say what the next thing is. I’m hoping to do the next one this year. I have several scripts in many different genres without being too specific. I would do another horror but it probably won’t be next.
Can you tell us a bit about the score? It’s a little different and is almost it’s own character.
Totally. The score is by Disasterpeace. I heard his music playing a few years ago at an Indie game called Fes which he did the music for. I just loved it and thought it was amazing. I contacted him to see if he would be interested in doing the music for IT FOLLOWS. I wanted an electronic score, I wanted something that moved between something beautiful and reached these other places where it was almost controlled noise, and an assault. I just think he’s a phenomenally creative musician and writer. I was just really excited to hear what he would create. He would write music and there would be a bit of back and forth in some places but overall it was cool. I’m very happy with what he did.
IT FOLLOWS has a very timeless quality to it – was it hard to keep the technology out of the film?
We definitely put effort into it in terms of a lot of it our Production Designer spent a lot of energy just selecting the right things from many different decades. It definitely leans in the direction of the 70s and 80s but there are some things from the 50s and 60s there. Some modern things and some things that don’t quite exist. It was definitely carefully planned. It places you outside [of time], like in a dream maybe. There are a couple of cell phones in the film but the rules and the way that people interact with them are different from the way we handle them in our world. It’s maybe not quite our world.
The film would be a great way to prevent teen pregnancies and STDs.
(Laughs)
Would you be up for it being shown in schools at a certain age? A new take on the why you should stay sexually safe?
(Laughs) I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s not so much my goal to make any kind of political statements with that but I think some people will read it that way. That’s fine if they do.
It would work.
It probably would. I wouldn’t want to make that statement but other people can say whatever they want.
IT FOLLOWS is released in cinemas across the UK from Friday 27th February. Read our glowing review here.
