10 Years Later, This Intense Horror Movie Still Makes Us Question Everything
Ten years ago, writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s $1.3 million horror film It Follows stalked its way into theaters.
The film follows the story of Maika Monroe’s Jay Height who has sex with her new boyfriend only to discover that he’s passed something evil onto her – it’s an entity that only she can see and takes many different forms as it follows her around. The only way for Jay to get rid of this being is to have sex with someone else and transfer the curse onto them.
It Follows turned into a cult sensation. Widely regarded as one of the most original horror films in a long time, it catapulted the careers of both the director and star. For fans, it’s remarkable how the film is still able to drum up debate and conversation a decade after its release.
‘It Follows’ turned Maika Monroe into elevated horror’s scream queen
Nowadays, moviegoers recognize Maika Monroe for her performances in films such as Watcher and Longlegs. Yet, it was the double whammy of The Guest and It Follows that put her on the map in the mid-2010s. It’s important to note here that It Follows debuted at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, but it only received a wide theatrical release in March 2015.
For Monroe, her turn as Jay Height in It Follows changed her career. It cemented her status as a scream queen for a new generation of discerning horror fans and led her to star alongside talent like Nicolas Cage, who proclaimed himself a fan of Monroe and David Robert Mitchell’s movie. Speaking to IndieWire, Monroe explained that the film resonates with people because it works as a throwback to a different time in the genre. “I really got lucky with It Follows,” she said. “It sort of changed the game for the horror genre. I think back in the ’60s and ’70s and early ’80s, there was some really amazing, elevated horror in the genre, and then something got lost somewhere and it was about hot girls and sex and blood.”
Let’s talk about sex
Due to the nature of how the entity finds its victims, many viewers presumed It Follows to be an allegory for sexually transmitted diseases. David Robert Mitchell told The Guardian that the film is open to various interpretations and was intentionally created that way. That being said, Mitchell holds a certain perspective about love, sex, and death. “We’re all here for a limited amount of time, and we can’t escape our mortality,” he said, “but love and sex are two ways in which we can – at least temporarily – push death away.”
As Mitchell explained, Jay encounters the danger through sex, but it’s also through the same act that she’s able to liberate herself. It’s a thought-provoking juxtaposition, especially considering how sex was often used as a trope in post-’80s teen-centered horror films. In It Follows, it turns into both a solution and curse.
However, the ending of the film – where Jay Height and Paul Bolduan (Keir Gilchrist) now walk hand-in-hand and are followed by an entity – indicates that Mitchell might also be saying something else about the correlation between sex and love. When Jay sleeps with Paul, she passes on the entity to him. It’s hinted that Paul then passes it on to a sex worker, so that he and Jay can be free and continue life together. It might not be possible, though. In this attempt to rid themselves of the evil inside, they sleep with various people who sleep with other people. However, it’s possible that somewhere down the line everyone has become connected through the act of sex, and now the entity follows everyone. Essentially, Mitchell could be questioning, “Do we leave some part of ourselves – good or bad – with every partner we have?”
The sequel, ‘They Follow,’ is on its way
It Follows made its presence felt, and fans wondered when a sequel would materialize – especially with the alluring tease at the end. After all, this is the horror genre where follow-ups aren’t optional – they’re mandatory. Plus, it also helps that the film made over $20 million from a paltry $1.3 million budget. It took almost a decade, but Deadline dropped the news that David Robert Mitchell would return to write and direct the sequel, They Follow, while Maika Monroe’s Jay Height would also be back for round two.
While Monroe didn’t reveal too much about the plot for They Follow, she told Collider Ladies Night in 2024 that Mitchell produced a gripping script. “I read it, and it’s just so f***ing good,” she said. “It’s so good. I’m so excited. I think where you’ll meet Jay at this point is maybe not what’s expected, but it’s so cool. It’s just, of course, as everyone says for sequels, literally, though, is just bigger and darker and more f***ed up. Reading it was the craziest thing ever.”
Years ago, Radius-TWC’s then-co-president Tom Quinn, who was responsible for the distribution of the original film, hinted that a sequel could see the protagonist trying to find the proverbial patient zero, the person where the curse originated from. It’s possible this angle could still be pursued, but Monroe said They Follow won’t be what people expect, so who knows. The pressure is on for They Follow, though, because even 10 years later, people can’t stop talking about It Follows – a horror film that can also count Nicolas Cage as one of its biggest fans.
