It Follows (2014)
There is a deeply unsettling genius to the way David Robert Mitchell frames a suburban street. The camera slowly, deliberately pans across wide-angle shots of empty neighbourhoods, and suddenly you find your eyes darting frantically around the screen, hunting for that next dull-eyed figure casually walking towards the protagonist. It sounds simple. It is anything but. That mechanic alone makes It Follows one of the most genuinely innovative horror films I've seen in years.
The story centres on Jay, played with wonderful, wide-eyed vulnerability by Maika Monroe (even if the delivery tips into woodenness at moments), a young woman who, after a sexual encounter, finds herself relentlessly stalked by shape-shifting, ghostly entities. The only rule she is given is a terrifyingly vague one: don't let them catch you. That's it. No lore dump, no mythology lecture, no helpful exposition from a professor character who conveniently knows everything. Mitchell just drops you into the nightmare and expects you to keep up.
And honestly, that restraint is where the film earns its reputation. Because the premise is so stripped back, the tension is allowed to breathe. There are moments of genuine, bone-chilling terror scattered throughout. I'm still thinking about the tall, spectral figure looming through the bedroom door, a scene that scared the absolute shit out of me in a way that very few horror films manage anymore. It's the kind of film that lingers well after the credits roll, making you glance down an empty street and feel your stomach drop just slightly.
Mitchell has famously said he doesn't place much thought into what "it" actually represents, preferring it to remain abstract. I have to respectfully disagree with that framing. Watching it, it feels almost impossible not to read the whole thing as a sharp, anxiety-inducing commentary on STIs, or unwanted pregnancy, or the lingering dread that can attach itself to meaningless, transactional sex. That reading is heavily supported by the way every sexual encounter depicted feels devoid of real intimacy, a theme hammered home rather bluntly by the film's closing sequence involving sex workers. It adds a layer of socio-sexual unease that pushes the material well beyond a standard monster movie, even if you want to leave the interpretation open. This thematic richness reminds me of how I felt watching Midsommar, another horror film where the metaphorical subtext is so heavily embedded that refusing to read it feels almost wilfully naive.
Where I do have some sympathy for the detractors is with the finale. The ending is left purposefully open, teetering on a cliffhanger that, if I'm being honest, feels a little like a cynical setup for a sequel. It pulls back slightly from the airtight tension of the second act, and after everything the film builds so carefully, that narrative loose end nags at me. I wanted something a bit more conclusive, or at the very least a final shot with the same eeriness the film had been sustaining so well throughout.
But that's a relatively minor gripe against a film that gets so much right. The wide, almost clinical compositions of those quiet American suburbs, the brilliant, pulsing synth score that never lets you fully relax, the performances that ground an inherently absurd premise in something recognisably human. Mitchell crafted something genuinely atmospheric here, a horror film built not on cheap shocks but on the slow, creeping dread of feeling permanently, inescapably watched.
Three and a half stars. Flawed in places, but the kind of flawed I can live with. I liked this a lot, and I suspect it'll be one I return to on dark autumn evenings for years to come.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2014 | Watched: 2026-07-29
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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