It Follows (2014)

At a glance

Director	David Robert Mitchell
Release year	2014
Runtime	100 minutes
Genre	Supernatural horror
Starring	Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe

Plot

Jay Height sleeps with a boy who then explains the rules. Something will follow her. It walks. It can look like anyone. If it reaches her, it kills her, and then it goes back down the line to the person who passed it on. The only way to put distance between herself and it is to pass it to someone else.

Jay’s friends believe her later than they should. They drive, they wait, they try to trap a thing that does not negotiate. The film is set in Detroit suburbs that look like several decades at once: old cars, a clamshell phone, a living room from the 1970s. The following is the plot. The sex is the transmission, not the subject.

Production

David Robert Mitchell wrote and directed it after his coming-of-age film The Myth of the American Sleepover. He has said the idea came from a recurring nightmare about being followed. The budget was about $1 million. It was shot in Detroit. Maika Monroe plays Jay. Disasterpeace, the composer, wrote a synthesizer score that does as much of the dread as the wide shots.

It premiered at Cannes in 2014, in Critics’ Week, and opened in the United States in March 2015 after a festival run. The gross was modest in theaters and larger in the afterlife of streaming and arguments. Mitchell has talked about a sequel for years. As of the mid-2020s it had not arrived as a feature. The film’s rules are simple enough that people retell them without the movie, which is both the design and the risk.

Cast

Maika Monroe as Jay Height
Keir Gilchrist as Paul
Olivia Luccardi as Yara
Lili Sepe as Kelly Height
Daniel Zovatto as Greg Hannigan
Jake Weary as Hugh / Jeff

Trivia

The entity walks. Running does not change its pace. Cars do, until they stop.
The score is by Disasterpeace, also known for the game Fez.
Mitchell shot it in a 2.35 frame so the edges of the shot could hide the follower.
The time period is deliberately mixed. The film never names a year.
Monroe’s next horror lead, The Guest, opened around the same festival cycle.
The pool scene is the film’s attempt to fight a rule that does not care about plans.