It Follows is a supernatural American horror film that terrified the socks off viewers when it was released. After a sexual encounter, 19-year-old Jaime “Jay” Heights is pursued by a supernatural creature. ‘It’ then follows Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, and Lili Sepe over the course of the film.
At the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, It Follows had its world premiere. It was released on March 27, 2015, after a successful limited release on March 13, 2015. Rotten Tomatoes’ consensus describes it as “clever, unique, and most of all, horrifying.” Worldwide, the film brought around $23.3 million, making it a massive horror success.
From a reflection on sexuality and the discomfort surrounding intimacy and guilt following casual encounters to “it” being a tangible symbol of HIV/AIDS and other STDs, It Follows has been interpreted many different ways. It was inspired by anxiety dreams that David Robert Mitchell used to have about being followed, and the video is designed to depict “dream logic,” in which a person can’t always escape a nightmare using standard methods or rational thought.
“It” has never thoroughly been explained by writer and director, David Robert Mitchell, despite the fact that numerous people have asked him about it. The filmmaker has indicated that it portrays human mortality philosophically, and that things like love or sex can keep death at bay briefly. Still, that death will come to everyone ultimately. But what exactly is “it”? That is exactly what we will be delving into in this article.
Movie synopsis
To understand what the entity is, we have first to take a brief look at the plot. The opening scene shows a girl, fleeing in terror, only to turn up dead the next morning with her limbs contorted in an inhuman manner.
We are then introduced to Jaime Height, a student at Oakland University, who goes on a date with her new lover, Hugh. Hugh points at a young girl near the back of the theater that evening. Unnerved by Jaime’s claim that she can’t see the girl, Hugh leaves, taking Jaime with him. Hugh and Jaime end up having sex in his car on their second date and he then incapacitates her with chloroform. She wakes up, strapped to a wheelchair in the Packard Plant, where Hugh reveals that she will be hunted by an entity that only they can see and that can take on the appearance of anyone. After killing Jaime, it will then go after the person who passed it on before her, Hugh. Hugh then drives Jaime home after they spot a naked woman approaching toward them.
The next day, the police are unable to locate either the naked woman or Hugh, who had been living under an assumed name. Jaime walks to class when she notices a woman in a hospital gown who is unseen to the rest of the class. Yara Davis and Paul Bolduan agree to aid Jaime’s sister Kelly. They stay the night at Jaime and Kelly’s house. Someone then breaks the kitchen window one night, and Paul investigates, but he doesn’t find anyone.
Their neighbor, Greg Hannigan, helps them learn Hugh’s real name which is Jeff Redmond, and they track him down to his home address. Ruby Harris, Jeff’s mother, opens the door, and Jaime then understands that Mrs. Redmond is the naked woman she saw at the Packard Plant. Jeff reveals that the entity began seeking him after a one-night stand, and that Jaime can pass it on to someone else by having intercourse with that person. Greg then takes Jaime, Kelly, Yara, and Paul to his family’s lake house. Jaime is attacked on the lakefront by the entity who had taken the form of Yara. As a result, Jaime’s pals break a chair over its body and shoot it once in the head, but it rebounds unhurt and attacks him again, this time as the neighbor boy. Her arm is broken when she flees in Greg’s car and crashes into a cornfield. Because Greg does not think that the entity exists, he engages in sexual activity with Jaime in the hospital.
After a few days, Jaime witnesses Greg’s entity busting a window in Greg’s house and entering. Jaime tries to warn Greg by calling him, but he does not answer. Liza Pulido, Greg’s half-naked mother, appears at Greg’s door and knocks before leaping on Greg. Seeing the creature having sexual relations with Greg, Jaime leaves in her car and spends the night in the open air. Jaime spots three young men in a boat while walking along the shore of a lake. Her next move is to remove her clothes and walk into the water. Afraid to take a chance himself, Paul invites Jaime back home to pass it on to him, but she declines to do so.
When they lure the thing into a pool, they plan to dump electrical devices into it to kill it. In the pool, Jaime notices the thing and realises it is her departed father. Instead of diving into the water, it hurls the devices at the woman in the water. Paul unintentionally shoots Yara when firing at an invisible target, but he hits the creature in the head and shoots it again after it is covered by a sheet, forcing it to tumble into the swimming pool. Then Paul shoots it again, and Jaime is able to escape. Blood pours out of the pool as she approaches it, causing her to turn back. Jaime and Paul then share a sexual encounter. Paul is driving around town that night when he comes across prostitutes in the street. An unidentified figure walks behind Jaime and Paul later on, as they stroll hand-in-hand down the street.
Creature explained
Now let’s see what all do we actually know about ‘it’. Jeff Redmond was the entity’s first known victim, claiming he was cursed by a girl he met at a club. Annie was another victim of the curse. It’s unclear whether Jeff passed the curse on to her, but a photo suggests they knew each other. Annie would eventually be killed by ‘it’ on a beach after giving up on escaping, and that is how the movie begins.
The Entity is the result of an unknown curse that is left unexplored in the movie. The curse is passed along through sexual activity, and once someone has been affected, the Entity will track them down and kill them. This could take a few days, weeks, months, or even years. When the Entity kills someone, it then moves down the line in order. It starts with the person who infected the most recent victim and so on. The length of the line is uncertain, as the curse’s genesis could be recent or very old. However, the film never goes into great detail about this, choosing to focus on those who have been impacted recently and their relationships.
New victims are usually informed of their fate. It seems like it would be in the best interest of the person who passed the curse onward to give the new victim advance notice of their situation so they can try to avoid it for as long as possible; there is no way of knowing when the curse has been shifted backward, so all victims must remain vigilant in case they are followed again. The Entity can only be physically seen by people who are or have been impacted by the curse at any point in time.
The Entity is seen to be continuously changing its appearance. The mechanism of this transformation has never been seen, although the Entity will have taken on a new form almost every time it is seen by at least one cursed individual after eluding everyone’s gaze, even if only for a brief moment. It may take on the appearance of any human, including known cursed associates. Any aspect, including size, weight, gender, and fashion, can be altered.
The Entity is also capable of replicating any natural function of the human body, including urinating, despite the fact that it is technically inhuman however, it is not a ghost or a spirit. No matter what it is doing, it appears to stroll at a normal pace and does not eat, sleep, or fatigue. It is unlikely to be killed and is resistant to damage, however it may take some time to recover. The Entity is also superhumanly strong, killing and then contorting corpses, as seen by the terrible manner in which it leaves its victims after they have been killed.
Although most people cannot see the Entity, it has a tangible physical form that anyone can touch. It is capable of breaking bones and twisting limbs into strange orientations, throwing a teenage guy several meters through the air, and causing a portion of a wooden door to explode outward. In addition, the Entity possesses inexhaustible stamina. It requires no sleep and never stops following its objective, yet never increasing its speed beyond a sluggish walk.
All sources of damage have no effect on the Entity. It may become inert when hurt, but it will usually recover and continue following the victim within seconds. It can even rebound from a headshot, though a second hit seems to kill or incapacitate it. Because the conclusion leaves the entity’s ultimate fate vague, it is unknown whether it may be destroyed by excessive harm. Mitchell, on the other hand, believes the chances of the Entity being killed are small.
At first, the entity appears to be mindless, taking no actions apart from travelling at a leisurely pace in a straight line to whoever is next on its list and murdering them once it gets close enough to touch them. However, its acts throughout the film demonstrate that it has a sense of cruelty, a menacing disposition, and a level of intellectual problem-solving that distinguishes it from being stupid.
It does not pursue anyone who is not cursed, nor does it engage in any kind of preemptive interaction with anyone who is aware of its existence and is attempting to obstruct its path – however, when those attempting to obstruct it get too physically close, it will act to push them out of the way, as it did when it pushed Paul with superhuman strength in response to the latter’s attempt to beat it with a folding chair.
However, the film’s writer David Mitchell has stated that “anywhere you go, it can also go. It could get to you.” He has also hinted that there may be more to the Entity’s powers than the characters are aware of, implying that it may have a way of levelling the playing field if someone attempted to “cheat” the curse. It, like Death, cannot be outrun indefinitely.
It Follows, is a ghost story, but its suburban characters aren’t always haunted by the spirits of the dead. Instead of celebrating or condemning teenage sexual activity, the plot is simply about teens who engage in it. “It Follows” prolongs and amplifies the potency of high school-age fears until they appear to be ancient existential terrors in the film’s conclusion. A sexual climax or other violent deed isn’t the point of the film in that sense; it’s the inability to cope with an unstoppable, awful mood that settles upon you as you reach adulthood and never totally evaporates.