Friday August 14th in Chicago. I've been wanting to see this film for some time and it finally made it to OnDemand (I never got around to seeing it the theater for some reason). This film has been a critical hit and received a Rotten Tomatoes score of 96%. The film is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, in only his 2nd directorial feature, and stars a relatively unknown cast. Mitchell opens the film with a young girl fleeing her home and driving to the beach. While there she gives a tearful goodbye to her family as she awaits the inevitable. The camera fades to black and the next image on the screen is of the young girl's mutilated corpse...
Maybe a pair of sneakers would've been a better choice of footwear.
Next we meet Jay (Maika Monroe), a teen aged girl growing up in a Detroit suburb just living an ordinary life. She has a sister Kelly, two friends who just hang around in Yara and Paul and a mother whom we don't see all that much. Jay has a few dates with a guy named "Hugh" and eventually Jay and "Hugh" have sexual relations. After making love the way a teenage girl and a 21 y/o boy can, genteel and seemingly everlasting, "Hugh" subdues and abducts Jay. Jay wakes up in an abandon building and "Hugh" explains that he's being hunted by a mysterious entity that can take any form it wants, and that the curse is passed on through sex. Oh by the way, only the cursed people can see the entity approaching. "Hugh" informs Jay that she should pass on the curse to keep the entity at bay.
That's about as far as I want to go lest I give too much away. Let's just say that Jay tries to run away from the entity but finally decide that passing it on may not be a bad idea however futile. The gang even come up with a plan to defeat the entity and they almost seem to have it beaten. Mitchell's film is very minimalist but he does a lot with the little he has (the film's budget is estimate at $2 million and has grossed around $15 million domestically to date). Sure there are few problems with the film but it never overdoes anything, which is rare in horror films these days. The Death by Sex trope in horror films is nothing new but I didn't care. The pace never gets to slow nor too fast, it moved just right. This film is hardly original but it's worth seeing, especially if you're into horror films.
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