In the quiet spaces between what we see and what we fear, two films summon an unstoppable dread that lingers long after the credits roll.

Long before the slow-burn chases of modern horror gripped audiences, a low-budget curiosity from 1962 laid the groundwork for tales of relentless, otherworldly pursuit. Carnival of Souls and It Follows stand as twin pillars in the subgenre of unseen threat horror, where the terror stems not from gore or jump scares, but from the inexorable approach of something intangible yet inevitable. This comparison unearths their shared DNA, dissecting how they weaponise invisibility, isolation, and inevitability to redefine fear.

  • How Carnival of Souls pioneered the spectral stalker with minimalist dread and dreamlike surrealism.
  • The evolution in It Follows, blending retro aesthetics with contemporary anxieties about intimacy and mortality.
  • Enduring techniques in sound, visuals, and psychology that make unseen threats timelessly terrifying.

The Phantom’s First Steps: Carnival of Souls and Its Spectral Origins

Released in 1962, Carnival of Souls, directed by Herk Harvey, emerges from the drive-in era as a black-and-white fever dream. Mary Henry, portrayed by Candace Hilligoss, survives a drag race crash into a Kansas river, only to be haunted by pallid, grinning ghouls who emerge from the water’s depths. Her subsequent life unravels in a decaying resort town, where reality frays at the edges: faces drain of colour in mirrors, a phantom organist commands empty pavilions, and the titular abandoned carnival becomes a limbo of the damned. The film’s power lies in its economy; shot for a mere $33,000 in Lawrence, Kansas, it eschews effects for stark, high-contrast cinematography that turns everyday settings into portals of unease.

Mary’s isolation is absolute. She rebuffs a landlady’s overtures and a minister’s advances, her voiceover confessions revealing a soul adrift. The ghouls, visible only to her, materialise in peripheral vision, their jerky movements evoking early silent film zombies. This unseen threat manifests as psychological erosion: Mary questions her own perceptions, culminating in a revelation that her existence is a posthumous purgatory. Harvey, a veteran of industrial films, infuses the narrative with Midwestern stoicism, making the horror feel intimately personal rather than cosmic.

What sets Carnival of Souls apart is its refusal to explain. The ghouls do not chase with axes; they simply are, infiltrating Mary’s world like a virus. This proto-slasher anticipates the shape-shifting entities of later horror, but its threat is subtler, rooted in existential void. Audiences in 1962 encountered it amid Psycho‘s shower scene frenzy, yet its slow menace influenced underground cinema, resurfacing in midnight screenings and inspiring filmmakers who prized atmosphere over action.

Relentless Footsteps: It Follows Revives the Invisible Hunt

Over five decades later, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014) transplants this archetype into a sun-bleached Detroit suburbia. Jay, played by Maika Monroe, inherits a curse via a sexual encounter: an entity assumes human form and pursues her at a walking pace, invisible to all but the afflicted. Transferable only through intimacy, the threat embodies adolescent dreads of STDs, loss of innocence, and mortality’s steady creep. Mitchell’s masterstroke is the entity’s persistence; no running exhausts it, no hiding fools it, only passing the curse buys time.

Visually, Mitchell nods to Carnival of Souls with wide-angle lenses and symmetrical compositions that emphasise vulnerability. Jay’s friends form a ragtag defence, firing guns and wielding lamps at disguised assailants, but the horror peaks in empty frames where the entity’s approach is implied by rustling leaves or distant silhouettes. The film’s 105-minute runtime builds tension through repetition: the viewer, like Jay, scans horizons for the next shape. This shared gaze cements the unseen as participatory terror.

Unlike Mary’s solitary torment, It Follows communalises the fear, yet underscores isolation. Jay’s lovers and siblings rally, but intimacy becomes weaponised—sex as both salvation and sin. Mitchell weaves in 1980s synth scores reminiscent of John Carpenter, contrasting the entity’s archaic gait with modern ennui. The film’s low-fi effects, practical disguises over CGI, echo Harvey’s resourcefulness, proving that suggestion trumps spectacle.

Invisible Mechanics: How Unseen Threats Build Dread

Both films excel in the mechanics of the invisible pursuer. In Carnival of Souls, ghouls flicker into existence via dissolves and shadows, their blank stares piercing the fourth wall. The threat’s rules are unspoken: they claim Mary through osmosis, drawn to her life force. It Follows codifies this with explicit transfer mechanics, heightening paranoia—who might unknowingly carry it? This gamifies horror, turning pursuit into a rule-bound nightmare akin to The Ring, but grounded in bodily violation.

Inevitability unites them. Mary’s ghouls ignore obstacles, materialising indoors; the entity’s walking pace mocks escape, as beaches and pools become futile refuges. Psychologically, this erodes agency: victims oscillate between fight, flight, and denial. Scene analyses reveal masterful pacing—Harvey’s drag race opener plunges into limbo instantly, while Mitchell’s pool assault escalates from whispers to chaos, each beat amplifying anticipation.

Mise-en-scène amplifies the unseen. Harvey’s carnival, with its skeletal rides and fog-shrouded midway, symbolises entrapment; Mitchell’s abandoned homes and arcades evoke post-industrial decay. Lighting plays pivotal: harsh fluorescents in Carnival bleach faces ghoul-like, while It Follows‘s blue-tinted nights render suburbs alien. These choices transform the ordinary into ominous, proving environment as co-conspirator.

Symphonies of Fear: Sound Design as Silent Stalker

Sound design elevates both to auditory horror. Carnival of Souls‘ titular organ motif, played by John Lindon, recurs like a dirge, its carnival waltz underscoring Mary’s descent. Silence punctuates intrusions—footsteps on tile, a ghoul’s rasp—creating hyper-awareness. This low-fi approach, using stock music, influenced ambient dread in The Blair Witch Project.

It Follows deploys Rich Vreeland’s (Disasterpeace) synth score, pulsing waves that mimic the entity’s advance. Diegetic sounds—crunching gravel, laboured breaths—foreshadow attacks, training ears for the invisible. Compared, Harvey’s organic eeriness contrasts Mitchell’s electronic pulse, yet both use absence: prolonged quiet before manifestation heightens visceral response.

These soundscapes explore trauma. Mary’s organ obsession reflects repressed guilt; Jay’s curse ties to sexual awakening. By making sound the threat’s vanguard, filmmakers bypass visuals, embedding fear sensorially for lasting haunt.

Psychological Depths: Isolation and the Fractured Mind

At core, unseen threats fracture psyches. Mary’s atheism clashes with ghostly portents, her arc from denial to surrender mirroring grief stages. Hilligoss conveys this through micro-expressions—eyes widening at reflections, voice trembling in confessionals. The film’s gender dynamics position her as outsider, rebuffing male saviours in a patriarchal town.

Jay’s journey parallels, her vulnerability post-deflowering sparking feminist readings: the curse as patriarchal punishment. Monroe’s performance layers terror with defiance, rallying peers in communal resistance absent in Mary’s tale. Both protagonists embody liminal states—post-accident, post-sex—where reality splinters.

Class undertones simmer: Mary’s boarding house drudgery versus Jay’s middle-class mobility. These films critique societal facades, unseen horrors stripping illusions of control.

Special Effects: Minimalism Meets Modern Craft

Effects shine through restraint. Carnival of Souls relies on greasepaint ghouls and double exposures, their unnatural pallor achieved via powder and lighting. No blood, just implication—the final ballroom waltz a choreography of the damned.

It Follows employs practical stunts: actors in period costumes for entity forms, wide shots masking distance. Underwater sequences and car chases integrate seamlessly, eschewing digital for tangible peril. Legacy effects firms praise this revival of 1970s techniques.

This shared minimalism spotlights performance and editing, proving unseen threats need no spectacle.

Legacy’s Long Shadow: Influence on Horror Cinema

Carnival of Souls languished until 1989 revival, inspiring Eraserhead‘s surrealism and The Others‘ twists. Its public domain status democratised access.

It Follows spawned imitators like The Endless, revitalising slow-burn horror amid franchise fatigue. Mitchell acknowledges Harvey, bridging eras.

Together, they anchor pursuit horror, from Halloween to A Quiet Place, proving invisibility’s potency.

Director in the Spotlight

Herk Harvey, born in 1924 in Denver, Colorado, embodied the industrious spirit of mid-century American filmmaking. A product of the University of Denver’s theatre program, he honed his craft during World War II as an actor and director in training films for the US Navy. Post-war, Harvey founded Centron Corporation in Lawrence, Kansas, producing over 400 educational shorts on topics from dental hygiene to driver safety. This corporate grindstone sharpened his economical style, blending stark visuals with moral fables—skills pivotal to his sole narrative feature.

Carnival of Souls marked Harvey’s pivot to horror, self-financed after a script epiphany during a Utah shoot. Though it flopped initially, grossing modestly on the drive-in circuit, Harvey returned to industrial films, retiring in 1986. His influences spanned German Expressionism—Nosferatu‘s shadows evident in his ghouls—to Val Lewton’s atmospheric terrors. Harvey directed sporadically thereafter, including What Happened to Kerry (1960), a juvenile delinquency short, and Steamship to the Rescue (no year specified, educational). He passed in 1996, his legacy cemented by Carnival‘s cult resurgence.

Filmography highlights: Carnival of Souls (1962, feature debut blending surrealism and existential dread); Why Vandalism? (1955, cautionary short); Shake Hands with Danger (1970, safety film narrated by a grim reaper figure); Teacher, He Scores (1967, basketball hygiene doc); The Wonderful World of T.S. & M (1962, traffic safety). Harvey’s oeuvre, though niche, underscores horror’s roots in everyday instruction, turning lessons into nightmares.

Actor in the Spotlight

Maika Monroe, born Dillon Monroe in 1993 in Santa Barbara, California, transitioned from competitive kiteboarding—placing third nationally at 17—to acting after a knee injury. Spotted in a surf shop, she debuted in At Any Price (2012) opposite Dennis Quaid, but It Follows catapulted her to scream queen status. Trained minimally, Monroe’s naturalistic intensity drew comparisons to Jamie Lee Curtis, her physicality shining in horror’s demands.

Post-It Follows, Monroe diversified: sci-fi in The Fifth Wave (2016), action in Meadowland (2015), and indie fare like Burning Bright (2009, early tiger thriller). Awards elude her major nods, but critics praise her poise; Village Voice lauded her It Follows vulnerability. Influences include skate culture and genre icons like Sigourney Weaver.

Filmography: It Follows (2014, breakout as cursed Jay); Greta (2018, psychological thriller with Isabelle Huppert); Watcher (2022, voyeuristic horror); Significant Other (2022, sci-fi body horror); God Is a Bullet (2023, crime saga); At Midnight (2023, rom-com); Talk to Me (voice, 2022); Independence Day: Resurgence (2016). Monroe’s trajectory blends genre prowess with dramatic range, embodying modern horror’s resilient heroines.

Craving more chills from the shadows? Dive deeper into NecroTimes’ archives for the unseen horrors that define our nightmares.

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