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

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay that explores how the cinematography in “It Follows” challenged slasher movie conventions.

2014’s It Follows never hides the fact that its interests lie in the 1980s; that its conversation partner is, first and foremost, the kind of slashers that sacrifice sexual deviants and reward resilient virginity.

If the film passed you by (or is collecting dust on your watchlist), here’s the gist: after hooking up with date, Jay (Maika Monroe) finds herself the newest victim of a horrifying disease. Something is stalking her now. It can look like anybody. And it’s coming to kill her. As long as Jay keeps moving, she’ll be fine. But when the creature keeps clipping Jay’s heels, she and her pals must find a way to divert the curse to someone else.

We could gladly spend all day listing the ways that David Robert Mitchell’s film challenges the conventions of the slasher film. But as today’s video essay notes, one of the film’s most sophisticated twists on the genre takes the shape of one of the slasher’s cheapest tricks: the jump scare.

From the use of offscreen space to the subversion of what we’ve come to expect from “spatial penetration,” here’s a video essay that examines the techniques that train us to be paranoid rather than shocked. Don’t forget to look over your shoulder … you never 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 Studies from the University of Chicago. They are a Film Studies lecturer and make video essays on, what else, film. You can subscribe to Schonig on YouTube here. And you can follow them on Twitter here.

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Related Topics: Cinematography, Horror, It Follows, The Queue

Meg Shields is the humble farm boy of your dreams and a senior contributor at Film School Rejects. She currently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She is also a curator for One Perfect Shot and a freelance writer for hire. Meg can be found screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).