It Follows (Cert 15, 100 mins)

Icon Home Entertainment, Thriller/Horror/Romance, also available to buy DVD GBP15.99/Blu-ray GBP17.99 or on-demand from various streaming services. Starring: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Jake Weary, Lili Sepe, Olivia Luccardi, Daniel Zovatto.

Virginal 19-year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) has decided to give herself to her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary). A first night of passion culminates in Hugh restraining Jay.

"You're not going to believe me but I need to you to remember what I say," he barks, informing Jay that she is now the target of a sexually transmitted spectre that silently and mercilessly stalks each deflowered victim.

The only way to escape the malevolent force, which walks slowly towards victims and is invisible to the uninfected, is to pass it on.

Back home, Jay's sister Kelly (Lili Sepe) and friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi) and Paul (Keir Gilchrist) console her but are reluctant to believe Hugh's outlandish story.

When the youngsters clash with the sexually transmitted menace, they acknowledge the deadly threat and go on the run with Jay and neighbour Greg (Daniel Zovatto) to concoct a plan of action.

It Follows is a skin-crawling jaunt into alcohol-fuelled teen angst that eschews the usual array of knife-wielding maniacs and masked bogeymen, sustaining tension as characters wrestle with a mind-blowing dilemma.

Sex still equals death in David Robert Mitchell's grim suburban nightmare but for the promiscuous, it's also a temporary stay of execution.

Monroe is a sympathetic heroine, faced with a seemingly impossible moral conundrum: look over her shoulder for the rest of her life or pass on her fate.

Mitchell's lean script ponders this agonizing choice with a level head, compelling us to urgently scan the horizon of each scene for the incoming threat.

Rating: ****