Essay Example on In David Mitchell's movie It Follows the main Jay Height Struggles

In David Mitchell's movie It Follows the main Jay Height struggles to cope with a supernatural entity This entity is called It and takes the shape of anyone Although there are numerous scenes where Jay encounters It the old maid scene builds suspense and confuses expectations from the audience Particular setting distinct music and special camera angles support the creation of this singular scene Jaime Jay Height is a typical teenage girl in college The movie does not give much background information about Jay leaving it to the audience to construct their own idea of her This is a horror mystery and thriller movie all in one the audience ranges anywhere from teenagers to adults because there is a variety of characters in the film The beginning of this specific scene takes place in a college classroom 

The camera moves slowly from the front of the classroom pass the large windows and stops at Jay s desk The atmosphere is calm and fairly quiet Outside the sky is gray with some light making it gloomy This occurrence foreshadows an eerie moment that will soon come up There is no other sound other than the professor speaking Noticeably in the background the audience can hear the professor giving a lecture on what seems to be a topic which relates to one of the movie s themes death You watch a horror film and you're likely to see a scene where a teacher talks about death or fate he says 

It's A good screenwriting trick Weinberg As the camera focuses on Jay she turns her head to look out the window but suddenly her eyes shift to focus on something particular outside and she turns her head a bit more The director uses this moment with Jay and her facial expressions to hint at something unusual happening In the next moment of this scene the camera starts switching between Jay and the windows at a rapid pace that builds As it positions on Jay she is fidgeting with her pencil and her facial expressions display the nervousness that is taking over her When it changes back to the window there is a figure in all white in the distance walking in Jay z direction This is also when the music starts playing it starts off very quietly but then it grows into a more high pitched sound The music adds to the intense feelings that Jay has while watching this figure The camera again quickly changes to the window and this time more zoomed in the figure is an old maid in a long white dress The audience and Jay can actually see what is walking towards Jay which makes it all the more nerve wrecking for both Jay and the audience Jay is completely terrified at this point her breathing becomes more rapid and cannot seem to focus on anything the professor is saying 

At this point the director makes the audience s adrenaline rush just as much as Jay s The temp score cues were scary and high energy We talked about making them even more intense and so we tried to push that level even higher We wanted you as the moviegoer to always wonder when that scary moment is going to come again In Depth It Follows Jay leaves the class and this is when the audience expects her to run into the old maid As Jay is walking down the hallway toward the exit doors she pauses and turns around to see the old maid right there The terror in her face plus the chilling music creates such an intense moment between them Jay calls out Hello to see if the other two girls in the hallway can see the old maid the girls say hello back but do not see the old maid at all The camera catches Jay rushing out the exit doors in slow motion emphasizing her emotions of fear There is also another key factor that the audience doesn t quite realize what Mitchell uses unless they take the time to really think about it It most of the time is coming at Jay at a calm and slow pace there s no running or fast movements This idea of calmness is much scarier than that of quickness Although It never really reaches Jay it s still frightening to think It will catch up to her She does everything in her control to get away but it s a constant thing happening Mitchell really plays with this idea because it does make the audience become more anxious in how they anticipate the scenes and reasoning behind it 

The director presents with the themes of sex and death If Jay has sex she will die from It but if she has sex she can pass it along to someone else Obviously you get this through having sex but you also survive by having sex since that s what is passing this on Fear Something about sex and death go hand in hand in this film The audience knows from the sex scene that Jay has It but they did not realize it would lead to a number of scenarios that Jay would have to deal with It David Mitchell s old maid scene from It Follows is significantly great because his approach carries over into the outcome Simple things such as setting lighting and music that are manipulated in a way bring out the strong points in this film He does all of this in a rare and unusual method but overall the scenes are unique to this specific movie