It Follows is this year’s The Babadook, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing is that It Follows is a tremendous horror acheivement, while the curse is, well, now it’s overhyped. The biggest difference between Babadook and It Follows, though, is that the latter is a modern genre masterpiece.

Following up Mike Pereira’s rave review isn’t going to be an easy task, so we’ll keep this simple…

How’s this for a quick sell: It Follows is as if David Robert Mitchell directed the Halloween remake (only Michael Myers is a succubus), and then added elements from films like The Ring and A Nightmare On Elm Street.

Jay (played by Maika Monroe, who is absolutely fantastic) has a pretty weird date, one that ends in some hot car sex. Instead of cuddling, her new hubby knocks her out, and takes her to an abandoned structure. There, she awakens tied to a wheelchair (see the above image). Her capturer is forcing Jay (along with the audience) to be introduced to “It”, while also sharing the “rules”. This kid was infected with a curse (like The Ring), and now he has passed it into? onto Jay. “It” is coming. “It” won’t stop following Jay until she’s dead, or until she passes the curse onto someone else. From here, things play out a bit like Halloween, as “It” stalks her, but also more like Elm Street where the “crazy” protagonist must convince his/her friends that they aren’t headed to the looney bin.

Simply put, It Follows becomes a shared nightmare.

While most filmmakers would try and give homage to their favorite horror films (yawn), Mitchell evokes the emotion, aesthetic and vibe of the classics, while injecting his own personailty into it. In essense, he’s furthering the genre.

There’s a bit of gore, here and there, but mostly it will make the viewer’s skin crawl. And even though the film is riddled with serious inconsistencies and plot holes (it’s best to just experience it and not think too much about it), It Follows is easily one of the most suspensful and scary movies in recent memory.

It Follows is classical horror, and deserves to be sculpted into the Mount Rushmore of horror alongside other greats.