It Follows (2014)
American independent horror has always had a habit of finding fresh angles on old anxieties, and It Follows (2014) arrived at a moment when the genre was largely occupied with found footage fatigue and franchise reboots. Shot on a modest budget across the quiet residential streets of suburban Detroit, the film feels almost deliberately out of time, drawing on the unhurried pacing of 1970s and early 1980s horror without resorting to simple pastiche. The Detroit setting is worth noting: the city's economic decline lends its empty streets and shuttered houses a particular atmosphere that no studio backlot could replicate. It is the kind of film that could only really exist at the margins of Hollywood, which is precisely where it was made.
David Robert Mitchell had made only one previous feature, the coming-of-age drama The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010), before turning his attention to horror here. That background in teenage suburban life is not incidental. It Follows shares the same preoccupation with adolescent restlessness and the particular texture of American youth, though filtered now through genuine dread rather than nostalgia. The film was produced through a small consortium of independent companies (Two Flints, Northern Lights Films, and Animal Kingdom) and picked up by Radius-TWC for distribution after generating considerable buzz on the festival circuit. Disasterpeace's synthesiser score, consciously nodding to John Carpenter, became almost as talked-about as the film itself, and rightly so. For a point of comparison on how horror and mood-building can work in an independent register, it is worth glancing at Midsommar, another film that stakes everything on sustained atmosphere over conventional shocks, or The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, an earlier example of a horror film building tension through the mechanics of pursuit and perception.
Maika Monroe carries the film as Jay, a college-aged young woman whose ordinary suburban life is disrupted after a sexual encounter passes something monstrous on to her, an entity that walks, slowly and without stopping, in her direction, taking the form of people she may or may not recognise. Monroe was relatively unknown at the time (her profile would rise further with The Guest, released the same year), and there is something well-suited about that unfamiliarity: she reads as genuinely ordinary rather than movie-star ordinary, which is exactly what the film needs. Supporting her are Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi, and Daniel Zovatto as friends drawn into the situation with varying degrees of scepticism and loyalty, and Jake Weary as the young man whose choices set everything in motion. The ensemble is competent if uneven, polished but unremarkable in the way that many low-budget independent casts tend to be, with Monroe doing the heavier lifting. The film also sits interestingly alongside other genre pieces that play with the idea of horror spreading through social groups, such as Bodies Bodies Bodies, which uses a similar ensemble-in-peril structure to rather different ends.
There is a deeply unsettling genius to the way David Robert Mitchell frames a suburban street in It Follows. The camera slowly, deliberately pans across wide-angle shots of empty neighbourhoods, forcing your eyes to dart frantically around the screen, hunting for that next dull-eyed assailant casually walking towards the protagonist. It’s a cracking, profoundly chilling mechanic.
The story centres on a young woman named Jay (played with wonderful, wide-eyed vulnerability by Maika Monroe, even if the delivery is a bit wooden at times), who, after a sexual encounter, finds herself relentlessly stalked by shape-shifting, ghostly entities. The only rule she is given is a terrifyingly vague: "don't let them catch you."
What I found so refreshing here is the sheer lack of exposition. Mitchell doesn't waste time explaining the metaphysics of the curse; he just drops you into this nightmare and expects you to accept the reality presented. Honestly, it’s handled really well. Because the premise is so stripped back, the tension is allowed to breathe. There are moments of genuine, bone-chilling terror. I’m still thinking about the tall, spectral figure looming through the bedroom door, a jump scare that genuinely scared the absolute shit out of me. It’s the kind of film that lingers, playing on your mind and making you imagine similar, dreadful scenarios unfolding in your own home.
The director has famously claimed he doesn't place much thought into what the "it" actually represents, preferring it to remain an abstract force. I have to respectfully disagree. Watching it, it feels impossible not to read the film as a sharp, anxiety-inducing commentary on STIs, unwanted pregnancy potentially, or even the lingering dread of meaningless promiscuity. This reading is heavily supported by the fact that the only sexual encounters depicted are largely transactional or devoid of real intimacy, a theme that is hammered home rather bluntly by the film's closing sequence involving sex workers. It adds a layer of socio-sexual dread that elevates the material beyond a standard monster movie, even if it is open to interpretation there.
I know the film has garnered a rather polarising critical reception over the years, and I can see where the detractors are coming from, particularly regarding the finale. The ending is left purposefully open, teetering on a cliffhanger that feels a bit like a cynical setup for a sequel (which, as it happens, is now in development). It pulls back slightly from the airtight tension of the second act. However, despite that narrative loose end, I thoroughly liked it. Mitchell crafted a genuinely innovative, deeply atmospheric piece of modern horror.
It Follows is one of those horror films that gets discussed more for what it might mean than for what it literally shows, which is either a mark of real ambition or a convenient cover for loose ends, depending on your temperament. What is not really in dispute is that Mitchell announced himself here as a director with a genuine visual instinct and a willingness to let discomfort accumulate rather than discharge it cheaply. The film sits in good company with genre entries that prioritise creeping unease over resolution, and its influence on the wave of so-called "elevated horror" that followed is fairly plain to see. It may not have all of its answers ready, but then neither does the thing walking towards you down the street. That, in the end, might be the whole point.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2014 | Watched: 2026-07-29
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for It Follows (2014) on YouTube
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