It Still Follows: Returning to the 21st Century’s Favorite Horror Cult Classic 10 Years Later

Do you remember being eighteen? For an age often associated with beginnings and fresh starts, It Follows explores a different feeling the liminal age sometimes elicits: loneliness. That may not be the first word that comes to mind when thinking of David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 horror hit, the one that’s gathered comparisons to John Carpenter and Wes Craven and features some of the scariest scenes of the 2010’s. But upon revisiting It Follows ten years later, it’s the word I can’t stop thinking about.

Spoilers to follow.

Loneliness, or rather, isolation, is where we begin. Dusk in an upper-middle class Detroit suburb, a girl with no shoes exits a house in frantic desperation as a rotating fixed camera finds her alone on an empty street, save for a neighbor unloading groceries across from her house. She is clearly running from something. The viewer doesn’t know what’s going on just quite yet, but what they’ve seen is someone with nowhere to go, until a few frames later when her horrifying fate is revealed.

And then we meet Jay, our protagonist, a quiet college freshman who swims alone in her above-ground pool as summer turns to fall. Inside the house, her sister and their two friends, along with a mother whose face we never see, head down in a magazine, hand cupping a glass of red wine. Everything within the frame suggests boredom, feelings internalized but not verbalized. The kids need something to do, while the mother contains a lifetime of sorrows and regret, unable to connect with her children or their friends. There is a gap between them, an emotional disconnect. A miscommunication.

Of course, the teenager-in-horror trope isn’t anything new. For years, theatre audiences have watched teenage protagonists party at Camp Crystal Lake, roam abandoned homes in rural Texas, and hang out together in Haddonfield on Halloween. But how often have we seen them half-watching black and white TV programs, bored and listless? How often have we watched them half-heartedly reading a book they’re not even sure is good yet? Horror films with teenagers and young adult boredom is nothing new, but the combination of the two is at the heart of It Follows. The typical emotions associated with the horror genre – excitement, fear, danger – seem to juxtapose these new feelings and emotions mentioned above. They’re not typically in association with each other. But what if they’re meant to be?

It Follows certainly believes so. It somehow contains some of the most frightening imagery this side of Insidious while simultaneously operating as a meditative drama on the existential challenges of young adulthood, the class implications of urban decay, and the emotional volatility of sexuality. The film understands that horror as a genre doesn’t need to be limited to tropes and slasher tendencies. These are important, even indispensable. But it’s or not and. It’s paranoia and horrifying creatures and loneliness and autumn leaves and turning nineteen. It’s the unbearable weight of being followed and the realization that you will never be a child again. You could even credit this for popularizing the grief-as-horror trend that exploded in the late 2010’s, paving way for films like The Babadook, Midsommar, and Swallow, among many, many others.

This sentiment culminates perfectly in the penultimate scene of the movie when Jay and her two friends attempt to lure the wandering spirit into an indoor public pool. Since this scene essentially operates as the climax, shouldn’t the characters be afraid of what they’re about to take part in? Shouldn’t we be trembling right alongside them? Those feelings arrive, eventually, for both character and viewer, but not before a discussion on childhood and aging, set to the synth-laden, 80’s-style soundtrack from Disasterpeace. Maybe there’s nothing scarier than realizing you’ll never be as young as you once were.

Or maybe the stalking creatures are still the scariest. Either way, it’s the combination of these two elements working together that makes It Follows so successful. And they exist together as Jay and Paul walk down the street together, hand in hand, as a lurking figure slowly walks behind them. Is it a ghost? Is it a metaphor for a life they once knew? Maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s scary nonetheless.