t the edge of a public pool, teenagers Maggie (Claire Sloma) and Beth (Annette DeNoyer) lament the impending end of summer, not wanting to return to school and their daily routine, they steal a couple of cans of beer. Ellipsis. School gymnastics training. Janelle (Shayla Curran) invites Claudia (Amanda Bauer), a new classmate, to a sleepover at her house. Claudia is new to the neighborhood but is already dating senior Sean (Christopher Simon). Rob (Marlon Morton) is in love with a girl he saw in the supermarket. The film takes place in a single night in which two simultaneous sleepovers take place, one male, one female. Lawson High School’s youth.
Scott (Brett Jacobsen), Jen’s (Mary Wardell) older brother, has just broken up with his girlfriend and seems as confused as any teenager even though he is no longer a teenager. He is trying to track down the whereabouts of two twin girls who were classmates when he was in school. At the time he liked them but couldn’t bring himself to say so. After some digging, he finds the whereabouts of the girls and the three of them have a close and strange moment in front of the school pool.
Maggie and Beth decide to go to a co-ed party for older teens where they blend in with the crowd. Simultaneously, Claudia kisses one of her classmates’ boyfriend and they have a fight. Rob meets the girl he saw in the supermarket, but decides it’s better not to go ahead. All these little stories intertwine, running parallel to each other. None of them is really important, and all of them are; small situations and dramas as they allude indirectly to the myth of youth.
The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010) is not a great film but it demonstrates the talent of a budding auteur. David Robert Mitchell is a skillful storyteller and achieves some not inconsiderable plot twists for what is, in reality, a very simple story, a minimal story. The cinematography is neat, as well as some shots with those suburban scenarios that become a sort of a sketch of certain scenes from It Follows (2014). David Robert Mitchell manages to keep the viewer in a state of constant attention and a certain incomprehensible anguish. The film’s big flaw is that nothing ever happens to turn that sedate angst into anything more than a melancholy overview.
The films that portray teenage angst, the dead moments, those films that are usually choral and talk about young people with nothing to do who wander around killing time, usually have a common pattern: they unintentionally demonstrate the predictability and boredom of human behavior, the fatality of clichés. Some, like Richard Linklater’s earlier films, are usually very good.
The problem with The Myth of the American Sleepover is that it lacks a moment of epiphany that persuades us as viewers that there is something more beneath the surface. The best moment (in which it almost succeeds), is when two of the protagonists converse under the moonlight and talk about the myth of adolescence, subtly questioning certain preconceptions and commonplaces that romanticize the supposed beauty of a difficult age. If the film included a tragic moment or a supernatural element, it would be great. The director probably figured that out as well, which is why It Follows is so similar in so many ways. It Follows is like a sort of rewrite of The Myth of the American Sleepover, but with the apt inclusion of the fantastic element in the plot.
The fact that the two films are so similar in so many ways is not a detail that can be easily overlooked. The Myth of the American Sleepover is like It Follows without the fantasy element, and the fact that the former is rather dull speaks volumes about the director’s natural approach to the horror genre. The contrast between the two films might also explain why, in It Follows, there are no grownups: the director picked up the story where the first one left off. In The Myth of the American Sleepover there persists an innocence that is spoiled in It Follows, as perhaps sex corrupts innocence. In any case, both contain a disturbing dreamlike element, which seems interchangeable, like a placid dream that turns into a nightmare.
It Follows evidences a maturity by the director, not only in terms of plot, storyline, genre, but also in terms of form, mise-en-scene, and style. The soundtrack by the artist Disasterpeace, added to a crisp pastel-colored photography and a certain general mystique difficult to explain, eventually suggest the viewer’s imaginary, in a retro key. It is a film with undeniable eighties resonances (one of the reasons that contributed to its success).
The film had an excellent reception and repercussion and managed to conquer platform users so that social networks abound in comments and videos on YouTube about the film and details and hypotheses about its broad meaning and scope. It Follows is a supernatural horror film that totally dissociates itself from the genre, becoming strange, permeable to symbolic interpretation and multiple meanings.
The premise is simple, almost childish, a multiform and elusive entity pursues those who are infected through sex, as if it were a venereal disease. The entity is slow and can take on the appearance of someone familiar. The only way to break the curse is to pass it on to someone else, it cannot be fought, nor are there known counter spells or resistance forces that would be effective.
It could have been a predictable teen horror film, but not only does it achieve truly terrifying scenes, it maintains an excellent climate and disturbing atmosphere throughout the film, as well as characters and situations that replace the obvious with unexpected metaphors. Is It Follows a film about HIV, about the fear of growing up, about the transition from adolescence to adulthood, about the fear of sex, about the fear of growing old and dying? There are no wrong answers.
The plot is intriguing, as are details that may go unnoticed on a first viewing. What exactly is the time frame of the film? They use some modern electronic devices but no cell phones. And why are there no adults, and the police seem to be part of the set? There are many scenes that are implausible, but this is probably intentional. David Robert Mitchell seems more interested in staging a nightmare with all its dreamlike charge than in telling a horror story with realistic pretensions (it’s his flaw and his virtue). On the other hand, the fact that there is no way to fight the evil entity ties in with a certain pure Lovecraftian mystique (a detail that is underappreciated).
Under The Silver Lake (2018), the director’s third film, is even more cryptic. Horror has been replaced by mystery, with unmistakable detective genre resonances, of Noir tradition, and special emphasis on Raymond Chandler’s work (from the very title that seems to refer to The Lady in the Lake, 1943), (also the beginning with topless neighbors links to The Long Goodbye, 1973, Robert Altman). However, it is not a detective film, nor a mystery film, but uses its devices to rehearse a contaminated, mixed, completely strange narrative.
Under The Silver Lake has many elements of parody, comic scenes, and situations, without being a humorous film either. It is rather disturbing in its strangeness. It works as a sort of homage and personal tribute by the director to a certain B-class cinephilia (explicit in the posters), blurring its narrative structures with the tradition of pulp and the American popular novel. From a rational point of view, half of the things are not understood, even basic things like what the protagonist’s job is. Again, it’s intentional. The director doesn’t seem interested in having his films reflect reality, but in generating his own mystique. At times it is almost surreal, dreamlike, in the tradition of David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock’s films -the latter’s gravestone makes a cameo on the film.
Sam (Andrew Garfield) is voyeuristic, idle, owes rent, and lies to his mother. On TV they talk about Jefferson Sevence (Chris Gann) a missing millionaire. In the movie’s universe, Under the Silver Lake is also the name of a strange guy’s fanzine (according to the local bookseller). Sam is attracted to Sarah (Riley Keough), whom he meets casually, as a neighbor, they spend a pleasant evening. That night, he reads the comic book which, on screen, turns into an animated film segment. “No one will be happy here until all the dogs are dead”, reads the comic. The next day, something unexpected happens, Sarah is no longer a tenant in the apartment, no one is surprised that she has decided to move out in the middle of the night.
Sam investigates, there is a disturbing symbol drawn on the wall. A presumed friend of Sarah’s comes by to pick up some personal items, Sam follows her trail all afternoon until he ends up at a rooftop party where a band called Jesus & The Brides of Dracula (a fictitious band made up of members of Silversun Pickups) is playing.
On his way home, he is pursued by a menacing figure. He is called on the phone by the comic book artist. In the comic book (intermediate animated film), Sam reads about the legend of the “Owl’s Kiss”: a beautiful woman in a mask who seduces men and women and kills them in bed. Sam has some theories and intuitions of babbled conspiracies. He does not believe that the media has a single purpose, he believes in encrypted and hidden messages.
He visits the home of the comic-book artist (Patrick Fischler) who collects resin masks of Hollywood personalities. The cartoonist is also a conspiracy nut and believes the world is full of secret codes, plus he’s convinced that a map in an old cereal box could be key to his life. The film will become a psychedelic chase of clues and encrypted messages.
Under The Silver Lake is a cinematic anomaly, a film that can be explained rationally but seems articulated and built on the irrational, like a huge exercise in automatic writing. Beyond the mixed reviews and what one may think about it, one must consider its experimental nature, the director’s purpose does not seem to have been to tell a coherent story, but rather to make suggestions to his audience. On the Internet it is possible to trace several sites that have found numerous coincidences and coded messages throughout the film. All these codes were probably introduced by the director for playful purposes, although it is also possible that it is all pure suggestion. The film lends itself to these games.
The numerous references to pop culture, the real and imaginary hyperlinks, form a tapestry of audiovisual suggestion that is unique in its kind. Although the mystery plot and intrigue are sustained until the end, the film itself swings back and forth between the plausible and the surreal. Towards the end, the relevance of the plot and even the intrigue itself begin to show signs of fatigue, everything gradually deteriorates. It is not a defect, but a feature, as if the essence were somewhere else, we don’t know where.
Under The Silver Lake is a film you can watch over and over again and not wear out, because it is suggestive and haunting, in a paranoiac-critical sense, since it means much more than it shows. It is a puzzle-film, to spend hours trying to decipher it. It fires the imagination in unexpected ways, like a Thomas Pynchon novel, making us think about amazing coincidences, the rational, the irrational, insinuations and madness.
For now, the three mentioned are all the director’s films, and while the three are completely different, they all seem to have a common pattern, as if seen together they can only belong to the director, as if they were different moments of his strange unconscious. A sequel to It Follows is expected soon. We’ll see what we’re in for.
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