'It Follows' Director Responds To Quentin Tarantino's Criticisms
Earlier this week, Quentin Tarantino took a moment to critique one of this year's surprise horror hits, It Follows. "It's one of those movies that's so good you get mad at it for not being great," he started, before going on to explain how he would've fixed it. (Short version: Tarantino didn't think the film did a good job of sticking to its own mythology.)
Now the director of It Follows has responded. And while it's gotta sting a bit to watch as an acclaimed director picks apart your movie in public, he seems to be handling it pretty well. David Robert Mitchell Quentin Tarantino comments after the jump.
Mitchell reacted to Tarantino's comments on Twitter.
Just so there wouldn't be any confusion, he added:
Basically, it sounds like Mitchell is taking Tarantino's comments in stride. That first tweet sounds more like a playful retort than an angry threat. It's worth keeping in mind that Tarantino singled Mitchell's movie out because he liked it — he called it "the best premise I've seen in a horror film in a long, long, long time" – not because he thought it was worthless.
In case you missed Tarantino's earlier comments, here they are:
He [writer-director David Robert Mitchell] could have kept his mythology straight. He broke his mythology left, right, and center. We see how the bad guys are: They're never casual. They're never just hanging around. They've always got that one look, and they always just progressively move toward you. Yet in the movie theater, the guy thinks he sees the woman in the yellow dress, and the girl goes, "What woman?" Then he realizes that it's the follower. So he doesn't realize it's the follower upon just looking at her? She's just standing in the doorway of the theater, smiling at him, and he doesn't immediately notice her? You would think that he, of anybody, would know how to spot those things as soon as possible. We spotted them among the extras.
The movie keeps on doing things like that, not holding on to the rules that it sets up. Like, okay, you can shoot the bad guys in the head, but that just works for ten seconds? Well, that doesn't make any fucking sense. What's up with that? And then, all of a sudden, the things are aggressive and they're picking up appliances and throwing them at people? Now they're strategizing? That's never been part of it before. I don't buy that the thing is getting clever when they lower him into the pool. They're not clever.
Also, there's the gorgeously handsome geeky boy — and everyone's supposed to be ignoring that he's gorgeous, because that's what you do in movies — that kid obviously has no problem having sex with her and putting the thing on his trail. He's completely down with that idea. So wouldn't it have been a good idea for her to fuck that guy before she went into the pool, so then at least two people could see the thing? It's not like she'd have been tricking him into it. It's what I would've done.
Does Tarantino have a point? Does Mitchell? Do you think they'd make good drinking buddies?