It Follows is very original horror film that I highly recommend.
The Story
The story is about a teen named Jay. After a seemingly innocent sexual encounter, she finds herself haunted by someone constantly following her. So she turned to her sister and her close friends for help.
The Review (Spoiler Free)
I’ve watched many horror films but I must say, It Follows stands out from all of the horrors films out there. It has very original and creative story. It Follows don’t have ghosts, monsters, or demons, it is just random people following you, but it is creepy as hell.
The story centers around character name Jay. After the innocent sexual encounter, she is haunted by different people following her. We find out she received some kind of curse, and now, in order to survive, she has to “pass it on” to others. The movie explains clearly “the rules” of this curse. Now, help from her friends, she is trying to figure out if she can survive from this curse. This is far as I could say about the plot of the movie without giving anything away.
The movie is not perfect. There some plot holes in the story line. But these few plot holes seems minor as you are really draw into the story. In fact, It Follows doesn’t rely on jump scares. There aren’t hardly any jumps scares in the movie. But the movie is so creepy, you’ll end up thinking about the movie after the movie is over.
What is so creepy and scary about the movie is because the movie is very unpredictable. You don’t know what is going to happen next. Through entire movie, you are always wondering where this “Thing” is lurking at. As the character constantly watch over the shoulders, you find yourself on the edge of your seat trying to prepare yourself for the worst. There’s never a sense of safety.
The movie ends with big of cliff hanger and ambiguous. I know many of you didn’t like the ending. But I feel ending is perfect for this type of movie. I am not sure if there is going to sequel or not, but the ambiguous ending really works because it makes you think about the movie for few days.
It Follows works because it has very memorable characters and enough back stories without getting too boring. Underneath all the horror and suspense, there is also story of friendship and love.
Only thing I don’t like about the movie is the movie soundtrack. The movie has cheesy 80’s style soundtrack that I wasn’t so excited about. But maybe this is what the director was going for.
Spoiler Ending (Spoiler Alert)
Let’s talk about the rules. The curse is almost like sexual transmitted disease. You get this curse when you have sex with someone who has this curse. In order to get rid of the curse, you have to have sex with someone who wasn’t exposed to the curse. But you are not out of the wood yet. If the other person dies, you inherit the curse once again. And when you die, the curse is inherit back to one that gave you the curse, and so on.
We don’t know anything about the curse or the “thing” that is following you after you received the curse. The movie doesn’t tell us how this curse originate and who the patient zero was. But I guess it’s not important.
The “Thing” is slow, but it’s not stupid. It can take form of random people, even people you know, or worse, your friends or families. It takes on form of whoever in order to get to you fastest as possible. Once you get touched by the “thing”, you die. So you have run far away from it as possible. But it will eventually catch up with you. Although one of the plot hole is that this “thing” did touch Jay twice, but she didn’t die. Once it pulled her hair, and later one, it grabbed her leg in the pool.
We do see that this “thing” invisible to others who are not cursed. Only the cursed and the one who was exposed to the cursed can see it. We do see later on that the non-cursed can interact with it, get hurt by it, or even shoot it.
We don’t know if there is way to beat this thing or not. But the Jay and her friends tried to beat it by trapping it in a pool and electrocute it. But the plan didn’t work because the “thing” outsmarted them. Although, one of her friend shot this thing few times in the head and we did see lots of blood filled the pool. But in my opinion, the “thing” didn’t die.
There is also sub-story of love relationship between Jay and Paul who is childhood friend who had crush on for long time. It appears that he is in love with her for very long time, but she is not interested in him. But through this tragedy, they started to get close. Eventually, he had sex with her so that she can passed on the cursed to him.
The last scene, we do see them walking holding hands as boyfriend girlfriend. Behind them is the “thing” following them. But this time, it is different because she are not fighting it alone. They are doing it together as a team.
In the Nutshell
It Follows is very original horror film that will haunt you for few days. I highly recommend. I give 5 out of 5 stars.
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Profile
Genre: Thriller
Rotten Tomato Rating: 60% / 25%
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“She is not alone, they are fighting it together.” She has passed the curse on to HIM – so it’s not her problem now right?
It is certainly her problem if she cares about him or he dies.