Director: David Robert Mitchell
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 3.5
After a sexual encounter, Jay (Maika Monroe) is told by her hook-up partner he passed "It" onto her - a curse, actually - and warns her that strangers are going to keep trying to attack her until she passes "It" on to another person (a perverse slant on La Ronde). While the sexual politics of this can be seen (depending on how you view it) as slightly problematic - I'm personally weary of any movie that seeks to 'punish' someone for choosing (wisely or unwisely) to engage in promiscuous behavior - I think Mitchell is trying for something more personal: "It" could be viewed as a metaphor for fear of true intimacy and commitment in an era of "hooking up" without an emotional connection (or even 'fear' over other people judging and criticizing you for said actions). As a work of horror, however, it's relentless, brutal and aesthetically crisp: in terms of tense and jarring scary movies it does to deserve to be ranked among the very best (even a spinning camera in a school hallway had me bracing for something terrible to happen). With this, Mitchell has just announced himself as a major talent (which I wouldn't have predicted with 2010's The Myth of the American Sleepover).
