Where Goes the Neighbourhood?

Abstract

This chapter looks at one of the reviews of David Robert Mitchell's It Follows from a local paper in Detroit, which describes the film's surroundings as disorienting but well-suited to the local landscape. It mentions Mitchell's emphasis on the importance of Detroit as the city where he grew up and as the site for his first movie The Myth of the American Sleepover. It also talks about Detroit's economic decline, with the city losing over a quarter of a million people between 2000 and 2010 and half its entire population since 1950. The chapter explores other horror films that discuss urban poverty, such as The People Under the Stairs (1991) and Candyman (1992). It highlights the difficulty of separating issues of class and race in US horror cinema.