“It Follows”: The Uncertainty of Certainty
Horror Film about the certainty of death, though we know not the day or hour.
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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?
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Following their consensual sexual encounter, Hugh chloroforms Jay to assure the ghost is now attached to her - setting himself free. This beat is treated as an allegory to rape. Jay did not consent to that portion of their encounter. She reports him to police and is hospitalized. We see her coated in blue and white. Jay is still unknowledgeable of the entities for certain, so remains in her world of blue, but is an official target of the entity, colored in white.
But that doesn’t last long.
Once back infiltrated in life, Jay is surrounded by yellow. She is now officially inducted into the dead entity’s world as it sets forth its real first charade - an old lady, who of course, dons a white hospital gown. Jay is also framed by plenty of grids and lines of windows to show her entrapment in this circumstance. The ghost walks on green grass to show it is crossing into her world.
To stay alive, Jay calls on some friends: her sister Kay and friend Paul.
They are in a gridded white room to show Jay’s entrapment of the ghost. Jay wears yellow as she’s enmeshed in the everyday world of the dead. Her friends wear blue as they remain in the world outside of the entity.
And the best part? These friends ain’t scared. They agree to help and join her world.
Another friend joins: Yara. Yara reads literary quotes that align their experiences - noting the parallels and thin line between life and death. As they all plan a sleepover to shield Jay, a ghost enters their realm. Red is spotted to show the danger, and green to show the blending of both worlds, sending them all on a singular road. Though the friends can’t see the entity themselves, they believe Jay and stick by her side.
First plan: keep Jay alive. Second plan: find Hugh - because WHAT THE FUCK?
Upon their entry into his last noted home, they discover his charade: a fake name and address. In his temp stay, Hugh set up alarms all over the home to note the entity’s presence. We learn another rule of the world: the entities can physically engage the world. This makes them also become notable to others who aren’t a target.
The bottles also tell a color story: yellow cans to note being in the entity’s world, a green can to note the traversing through two worlds, red cans to note the danger, and a clear (white) bottle to represent the ghost.
This next moment was so insufferably good -
An entity follows Jay and the gang as they seek help from school… and… nothing happens. It just… exists. At this point, why go for a jump scare when the scariest thing is our suspicion? The rules work SO good, the film no longer has to play by them. We, the audience, will do the work.
It even approaches her here and - not a peep.
This next one is slick - and a bit tricky but I got you.
The beach is a perfect location to easily utilize color theory in film. Yellow sand versus blue water, followed the natural greenery to show the enmeshment of worlds.
As Yara invites her friends to swim in the water (blue, outside of the world)… the entity charades as Yara to its way to attack Jay on the sand (yellow, inside the world)!
In this moment we also learn a new rule of the world -
Surrounding people can attack the entity back as long as they can spot it! Shooting this moment against the greenery was masterful - it communicates that the friends are no longer in a separate world from Jay and conjoin to defeat the entity.
A new friend joins - Greg - who offers to get that entity off Jay’s hands… by sleeping with her. Jay then tries to induct new girls into the entity’s world (blue and yellow sweater), by choosing a death target for himself (white sweater). Jay is masking as a neutral, nice guy (blue), but beneath it all, he has a secret agenda (black tee). Since the theme of this movie is ambiguity, it’s never made clear whether Greg has successfully completed his mission by sleeping with one of them.
It also calls into question what and who we’re rooting for as an audience. Why should Jay live compared to any other girl? Is this all the right choice?
Either way, Greg doesn’t make it.
The entity takes the mask of his mother, who proceeds to - ahem - sex him to death? Yeah. Sex him to death.
This moment creates two questions of ambiguity for the audience: did Greg ever successfully sleep with one of the girls and / or… did the helpless, unknowledgeable girl already die after sleeping with Greg?
Rule of the world: if the person you pass it to dies, the entity returns to you. So here’s the thing: anyone targeted by the entity will never get rest, because how can you ever rest assured that the person you passed it to remained alive?
And that’s expressed visually when the entity’s back on Jay:
This image sums up her entire experience: she never knows the day or hour the entity will catch up to her - represented by the red curtains and comforter, and two lamps: one light (her), one dark (entity).
Another moment of unclarity, made by Jay -
She becomes an endangering person (pink), spotting men on a boat (blue / white) with plans to sleep with them, but the film never confirms whether or not she does.
But, the friends take one final swing to help Jay. They attempt to lure it in a pool where they’ll electrocute it to kill it for good.
We can see the separation of all colors white / yellow / blue. All teams are at odds.
In this climax, the scariest thing possible happens - we cannot see the entity. Only Jay can. We and the friends are completely blind during the big fight.
We later learn, the entity took the mask of her late father. Damn, that’s cold.
But, the friends win in a death only Jay can see, leaving us on this beautiful image:
We are behind Jay and she is shadowed / silhouetted because it’s unknown whether or not she’s still immersed in the entity’s world. We do not know her truth.
Her friend Paul also makes one last sacrifice: he offers to sleep with Jay to assure the entity is no longer following her.
The film also leaves his next actions ambiguous, leading us to question whether or not he slept with sex workers to pass it on. Again, putting our own morality at play: who deserves this disease? But, looking at the colors the characters are wearing, what would you assume happened?
As the film ends, it answers less and less questions. How can we use color theory to estimate the final answer of who’s got the entity attachment?
From these colors alone, I would assume Paul is back out, and Jay is back in. However, that’d break the rules of the world as Paul would need to die for the entity to attach itself to Jay again. So, maybe at this point the fight has been so internally traumatic, the idea of it all haunts Jay enough.
So, Yara ends with a read of literature: “When there is torture, there is pain and wounds. Physical agony and all this distracts the mind from mental suffering so that one is tormented by the wounds until the moment of death. And the most terrible agony may not be in the wounds themselves but in knowing for certain that within an hour, then within 10 minutes, then within half of a minute, and now at this very instant, your soul will leave your body and you will no longer be a person. And that this is a certain, the worst thing is that it is certain.”
And we come to this final image:
Death is certain, but when… is not. So, the friends will ever be in danger, until.
Always following.
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Latasha