In an incredibly subtle moment, Jay refuses to tell Kelly (Lili Sepe) what the monster has taken the form of, but if you rewatch the movie, you’ll see that the middle-aged man is their father, who is featured in several family photographs in the house but completely absent from their lives.
The monster takes on the form of a middle-aged man when Jay and Kelly try to kill it at the pool. ONE OF THE MONSTERS IS JAY AND KELLY’S FATHER. Annie gets killed at the lake the monster almost kills Jay during their lakeside retreat and in the giant community swimming pool and Jay experiences an existential crisis when she considers having sex with three men in a boat to pass the curse onto them.
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Jay is safe at the beginning of the movie in her backyard pool, but all the other, larger bodies of water only promise death (and the kids keep running to them). The old gag about describing horror movies is that they do for X (balloons, dogs, taco stands) what Jaws did for going in the water, but It Follows does for water what Jaws did for going in the water. BODIES OF WATER ARE ALSO MADE TO FEEL DANGEROUS. Pay attention to red clothing, red lighting, that damned red ball jump scare, red cars, red nails, and other red objects to let you know that danger is getting closer. In horror movies, the color red is regularly used to signal that blood is on the way, and It Follows sticks to that tradition with gusto. THE COLOR RED FORESHADOWS THE MONSTER'S ARRIVAL. Mitchell specifically wanted to avoid the trope of the perfect nugget of information about the monster’s vulnerabilities magically dropping into the gang’s lap. What would you do if you were confronted by a monster and found yourself trapped within a nightmare?” It’s something that Scooby Doo and the gang might think of, and that was sort of the point. “It’s the stupidest plan ever!” Mitchell told Vulture. Jay and her friends plot to electrocute the monster in a pool even though they don’t know anything about what might weaken it, and they were warned directly that it’s not dumb. THE PLAN TO KILL THE MONSTER IS TERRIBLE.
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Plus, Jay’s full name is Jamie-a nod to scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, who (just like Jay) has a sister named Kelly. The first girl to be killed in the film is Annie (Bailey Spry), who shares a name with Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes), the first girl killed in John Carpenter's Halloween. CHARACTER NAMES ALLUDE TO CLASSIC HORROR FILMS. He conceived the sexual component as an adult, and the concept for It Follows was born. “Whatever I was going through at that time, my parents divorced when I was around that age, so I imagine it was something to do with that.” He also notes that horror films like Night of the Living Dead (which he saw as a young man) may have informed it. “From what I understand, it’s an anxiety dream,” he said. IT’S BASED ON A DREAM.Īs a child, Mitchell regularly dreamed of a malevolent being taking the form of different people to slowly menace him. Essentially the movie takes place during a stretch of impossible weather during an unreal era, making it impossible for you to find your footing. Characters also wear bathing suits or heavy winter coats on the same day without appearing too hot or cold. It’s presumably modern day, but all the TVs are from the 1980s, and all the movies the kids watch are classics. The vintage cars all look brand-new, but people also have cars from the 2010s. Almost none of the young characters use cell phones, but they exist-and Yara (Olivia Luccardi) has that clamshell e-reader. ITS TIME PERIOD DOESN’T FEEL REAL.ĭavid Robert Mitchell, production designer Michael Perry, and costume designer Kimberly Leitz coordinated to throw us off-balance without us even realizing it. Here are some facts about the film that will follow you wherever you go. Mitchell blended old favorites and originality to invent a monster worthy of haunting our every waking moment. In more good news, if the person you had sex with gets killed, the murder monster resumes searching for you. It Follows was a terrifying tone poem that spoke to youthful sexuality by focusing on a young woman named Jay Height (played by Maika Monroe) who contracts a deliberately-paced supernatural murder monster that relentlessly targets you until 1) you’re dead or 2) you’ve passed the curse along by having sex with someone. After capturing the coming-of-age genre with cringe-worthy accuracy in 2010's The Myth of the American Sleepover, writer/director David Robert Mitchell turned his low-budget sights on a horror film that would go on to make all of us fear sex, lakes, and literally every person walking toward us.