It Follows Movie Review – Don't Have Sex With Random Strangers

Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: March 27, 2015
Rating: R
Director: David Robert Mitchell


Just in case we needed another reason not to have sex with people we just met, here comes It Follows.


A young woman runs out of her house clad only in panties, a tank, and heels. After a neighbor asks if she's okay, her father comes and yells for her. Running back to her house, she runs off and eventually finds her way to the beach, where she spends the night shaking in fear. The following morning, we find her dead on the beach.


It Follows then introduces us to Jay, a pretty blond teenager with a crush on a boy named Hugh. While playing a game in the movie theater, Hugh points out a woman in the back. When Jay doesn't see her, he freaks out and pulls her out of the theater. On their second date, they have sex before he chloroforms her and takes her to an abandoned building. Once there, he tells her that she now has "it" and that "it" will follow her. He shows her a naked woman stalking them and explains that it can take on many different forms and once it kills her, it will come for him. Hugh also warns her to have sex quickly to pass it on to someone else.


After Hugh leaves her partially naked on the road in front of her house, her family rushes her to the hospital. Jay sinks into a deep depression and keeps noticing the weird people that seem to follow her. Though she tries to explain what happened to her sister and friends, no one really seems to believe her until the attacks begin happening. They track down Hugh's former apartment and discover that he rented it under a fake name before actually finding him, but he offers little in the way of help. Jay and her friends finally go away together while she copes with deciding what to do next while it keeps following her.


I have mixed feelings about It Follows. On the one hand, I liked it when I first saw it, though I do wonder if I would have liked it less had I not seen it immediately after Unfriended. On the other hand, there wasn't much memorable about it, and I have to admit that I have a hard time remembering a lot about the movie, even though I just saw it last night.


So many people compare it to classic Hollywood horror films like Halloween, but I actually found the homages a little distracting. It literally seems like the director couldn't decide which decade he wanted the movie set in. Everyone, except for a few people, seem to drive really old cars, no one ever has or uses a cell phone, and the interior of homes seem really outdated, which makes it seem like a 70s or 80s movie. But, one of the characters uses a tablet shaped like a clam shell, which tends to bring it into the modern era. It probably wouldn't bug too many people, but it bothered me for some reason.


It Follows did have some good moments though. Some of the forms that it takes were particularly disturbing. I'm not too crazy about seeing a giant, a deformed kid, or a woman with one breast hanging out turning up in my house. The director also created a great atmosphere with those forms showing up just behind Jay or off to the side of the camera. Unfortunately, I think he took it just a little too far. It literally got to the point where it seemed like there was a "fake it" behind Jay in every scene.


Like I said, I'm a little on the fence about this one. It was a lot better than Unfriended, but I'm not sure if I really liked it as much as I would have, had I watched it on its own.