Reel Entropy

“There can be no murder in paradise.” Photos courtesy LIonsgate.

The thing about period pieces is the viewer needs to already have some knowledge of the period in question. Child 44 would have been better as a Russian film for several reasons, but as an American/English production for American and English audiences, it falls flat.

The film is set in 1953 U.S.S.R following Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy), an MGB agent tasked with finding and killing spies, which seem nonexistent in the film. Early, he is asked to investigate his wife, Raisa Demidova (Noomi Rapace). In a second, unrelated plot, a serial killer who preys on children stalks the railroads connected to Moscow, but Demidov is not allowed to investigate because murder cannot exist in the perfect communist state.

The two plot lines compete with and take away from, rather than compliment, each other.

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As a journalist myself, the film immediately looses all validity by asking me to sympathize with a man who fabricated a story. It then gains it back by implying he is the same as a maniac like Longo. Photos courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures.

True Story is one of the most emotionally tense movies of the year.

The movie tells the true story — teeheehee! — of journalist Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) and killer Christian Longo (James Franco). Early in the film, Finkel is fired from the New York Times for fabricating a composite character in a story about contemporary African slavery. Later that year, he learns that Longo, taken by the FBI for murdering his wife and three children, was using Finkel’s name when he was taken. Finkel visits Longo in prison and resolves to write a book on him. The film consists of their conversations approaching trial as well as carefully cut montages that promise to reveal the truth behind Longo’s crime.

The film succeeds at the surface level due to intense dialogue, wonderfully unsettling set pieces and sterling performances from its leads and Felicity Jones. Franco is sinisterly melancholy as the accused murderer. Hill gives a subtler, but just as keen a turn, as does Jones as Finkel’s girlfriend, Jill.

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After having ostensibly consensual sex with her, Hugh chloroforms Height and chains her to a wheelchair to force her to experience the horror she is now infected with. Afterward, he dumps her unceremoniously on her front lawn in only her underwear, further adding to the rape imagery and implications of this sequence. Photos courtesy RADiUS-TWC.

It Follows does exactly what it says on the tin — it feels like an urban legend you’ve known your entire life.

Early in the film, Jay Height (Maika Monroe) has sex with her new boyfriend, Hugh (Jake Weary), who gives her a unique STI. A creature will follow her, wherever she goes. If it reaches her, it will kill her, and then continue on its way back to Hugh and then onto the woman who gave it to him. The only way to get rid of the creature is for Height to pass it along to the next victim.

It Follows is an excellent movie. It’s rarely scary or unpleasant to watch, while at the same time being uncomfortable all the way through and leaves its audience with a lasting sense of paranoia. This is exactly the feeling a horror film should create.

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