Horror news: ‘It Follows’ goes for a wider release

Jonathan Abramson, manager of the Magic Lantern Theater, has been talking for the last couple of weeks about a horror movie title "It Follows" that he hoped to open this Friday. He sent out word this morning that "It Follows" was NOT going to open at his theater.

He gave no reason. But it comes as no surprise. Consider this.

This is hardly the first time a movie's distributor has had second thoughts about opening its product at an art theater instead of a more mainstream location. Not that we've yet received notice that "It Follows" is going to open locally anywhere else. Word on that possibility is likely to come down later today. Or on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, my "Movies 101" partner Nathan Weinbender has seen the film and is high on its scare quotient. Especially, he says, during the first half.

Here, by the way, are some of the other critical reactions:

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: " 'It Follows' is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. It's also one of the most beautiful."

Hazel Sills, Grantland: "Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, 'It Follows' is the latest in a long line of sex-as-horror flicks that somehow grounds its terror both in reality and in the otherworldly, making this a smart and thought-provoking movie."

David Edelstein, New York Magazine: "My whole life I've been a horror-movie freak, and I've rarely been as scared as I was at 'It Follows.' But it wasn't a fun kind of scare. It was the so-upset-I-feel-sick kind of amorphous dread."

Whoa on that last one. Too bad for the Lantern. But let's hope "It Follows" opens somewhere in Spokane.

Who doesn't like to sit scared in a dark theater? If only it were in the Lantern.