BLOG ENTRY #08

It Follows

“What follows and why it follows?” is the mystery driving David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 horror film It Follows for the bulk of its 1 hour and 34 minutes run time.

Hugh and Jay during their date

In the film, after Jaime “Jay” Height (Maika Monroe) had a sexual encounter with her newly boyfriend Hugh/Jeff Redmond (Jake Weary), she finds herself haunted by a mysterious entity that brought nightmare to her teenage life.

This entity, as explained by Hugh, is a cursed that he passed on Jay when they had an intercourse. This curse is an entity that can only be seen by the person who had the cursed (which is now Jay). The entity can take the form of any person and will follow her repeatedly at a walking pace. If IT catches her, it will kill her and will go after the previous person who had the curse (which would be Hugh) to get them to pass the curse on to someone else.

 

Jay and Hugh after the cursed was passed

The entity that follows

Frightened by the entity, Jay shares the secret with her sister Kelly Height (Lili Sepe) and her friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Paul (Keir Gilchrist) who has a crush on her and a neighboring friend Greg Hannigan (Daniel Zovatto). Soon they search Hugh to know the truth and try to find a solution to the curse.

 

Jay and her friends as they ask Hugh about the curse

As the group spends their time together to help Jay, they first go back to Greg's house where they had an encounter with the entity that cause Jay to flee, gets into a car and drives away, but only manages to crash into a cornfield that made her hospitalized for her broken arm.

Before she is released, Jay decides to pass the curse on to someone else, to Greg, which made Paul heartbroken. But Before long, Greg was haunted down and killed by the entity at home. Now, the curse has reverted back to Jay.

Paul wants to have an intercourse with Jay to help her, but she refuses him, since she does not want him to be killed. Jay suddenly comes up with a plan to kill the entity. The group goes to a deserted swimming pool in hopes of luring it into the water and then electrocuting it. Jay is the bait and gets into the pool. When she finally spots the entity, it seems that it has figured out the plan and starts throwing electrical devices into the water to kill Jay. Unable to see the entity, the others fire blindly to try to kill it. Paul accidentally wounds Yara, but then shoots the entity in the head, supposedly killing it.

After heading home, Paul and Jay finally have an intercourse. Paul then looks for a prostitute, seems to be that the he plans to have an intercourse with other girl in order to quickly pass the curse.

 

Some prostitute Paul stares at

But in the end, Jay and Paul are seen walking down the street holding hands and behind is a person following them.

Director Mitchell’s rated R film is not the type of horror movie that may be adored by the most of the public. The simplicity of the title “It Follows”, where “it” refers to the entity following the person who is cursed and the word “follows” refers to what the entity does in the whole story, does not reflects how the movie can be easily understood by the viewers. Many may find it boring and uninteresting since there are no such scenes that may make the viewers scream and feel an extreme suspense or thrill. The story only revolves around the main character escaping from a curse that has no definite explanation where it comes from. The question “Why it follows?” has not given any reason from the beginning until the end of the film which may make the viewers find it as an obscure movie. The unresolved mystery in the film is something that can be usually seen in horror movies; however, the calm scenes are something that does not give justification to its genre as a good horror film. If Mitchell was able to make the flow and the scenes as terrifying as it could be, then its genre may be satisfied.

Though the film may be uninteresting to others, when people look deeper into it, it seems that it shows a lot of symbolisms. A teenage girl putting herself in danger by having a sexual intercourse with a strange guy can be seen as social issue depicting premarital sex. In some countries, this is common but still, it is wrong. This is a problem that keeps on happening among teenagers – a continuous phenomenon same as how the entity continues to follow the cursed people. The entity in the movie seems to symbolize sexually transmitted diseases like HIV/Aids since the curse can only be passed to someone through an intercourse. Also, the concept of solving the mystery in the film is something which shows that a mistake is cannot be corrected once committed, its consequence will continuously affect the person. Engaging in premarital sex is a mistake and once it is done, it is done. No going back to refuse not to engage with it. Like how the characters keep on escaping from the curse but still in the end, it follows them. It seems that the obscureness of the film gives the viewers something to ponder about.

With the reality that people are facing in their lives, the director’s view about this matter seems to be reflected on how the film was presented. Accordingly, as Mitchell stated, "I'm not personally that interested in where 'it' comes from. To me, it's dream logic in the sense that they're in a nightmare, and when you're in a nightmare there's no solving the nightmare. Even if you try to solve it." He also said that, “While Jay opens herself up to danger through sex, sex is the one way in which she can free herself from that danger ... We’re all here for a limited amount of time, and we can’t escape our mortality...but love and sex are two ways in which we can – at least temporarily – push death away.” Mortality is one thing that “It Follows” depicts. People exist in this world, they do a lot of things and try to live their lives to the fullest. People seems to escape from the thought of dying through living. But at the end, death is inevitable. In a mortal’s world, life cannot last.

To sum it up, Mitchell’s movie “It Follows” may not be as entertaining as what many expects. However, looking into it deeper, there is somewhat meaningful thought that it depicts – an obscure beginning, a demanding yet meaningful middle, and a certain ending of humans’ life.

Source Link: http://hdmoviespoint.com/it-follows-full-movie-720p-hd-free-download/

Documentation:

While watching "It Follows"

Working on the blog