“It Follows”: The Uncertainty of Certainty

Horror Film about the certainty of death, though we know not the day or hour.

New posts every Tuesday & Thursday!

It Follows is a 2014 American psychological horror film written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. After carefree teenager Jay (Maika Monroe) sleeps with Hugh for the first time, she learns that she is the latest recipient of a fatal curse that is passed from victim to victim via sex. Death, Jay learns, will creep inexorably toward her as either a friend or a stranger.

I originally saw It Follows the moment it came to streaming and loved its concept! It used the horror genre to touch the bases of issues pertaining to teens: sex, assault, STDs, and the horrific idea that we may not live forever, even while feeling immortal as teens with the world beneath our feet. We do not have forever, and the choices we make in those precious years may impact that.

This is also a campy fun film that has a lot of sex, violence, jump scares and a bit of fart jokes. So. Let’s dive in? (Warning: graphic images ahead)

I always like to dive into the color map so we can track the story and our players:

• Yellow = Everyday World

• Blue = New World

• Red = Danger

• White = Death

• Black = Unknown / Void

Now that that’s clear, we can dissect the opening image: a girl is on the run.

We don’t know who she is, or what she’s running from. But, the colors can tell us a lot: green notes that she is in-between worlds, of which we do not yet know. But, green is a combination of yellow and blue. She wears white to hint that she’s running from death, and red heels to signify she’s in danger.

Mind you, she’s running in heels. Since this is a story about the horrors of sex, we can imagine intercourse was a road to get her in this position. Sis is also a track star.

But, she doesn’t make it.

Hope you heeded my warning about the graphic images. An entity of death caught up to her and killed her.

Which brings us to our heroine, Jay.

Usually films begin with the color yellow before the hero breaks out of their everyday world into a new one, represented by the color blue. However in It Follows, Jay begins within two prominent colors: blue and red. She is already outside of the everyday world - meaning she isn’t in control - and red to signify she’s in danger.

The next sequence shows her prepping for a date with Hugh.

When we see characters in mirrors, it shows a split in identity. Considering the context of the film, we can imagine Hugh will put Jay in a different world. Hugh is in red as he directly plans to endanger Jay, who’s in pink (red + white).

Hugh points someone out to Jay during their meet-cute, but… Jay can’t see her. He notes the girl is in a yellow dress. If a dead entity we can’t see is wearing a yellow dress, that means that the entity is the everyday world - it’s in control. In fact, the color yellow is literally in the doorway, through the threshold. It’s where she’s going.

All we see in Jay’s POV are those blood red curtains in the negative space. We’re in trouble.

So, what is Hugh’s plan?

To bring Jay into the everyday world - where they are controlled by a following dead spirit, currently set to kill him. The cheeky yellow theater teases us with the movie title “Charade”, as both the entity and Hugh wearing masks to execute their plans.

Rule of the World: the entity will stop following to kill you if you sleep with someone. You must pass the death onto someone else: an allegory for unsafe sex.

Hugh has successfully passed the death entity onto Jay. How will Jay get out of this?

To continue diving into the rest of the film with me, please consider becoming a subscriber! Posts are made available for free subscribers after three weeks of the posting date.