Being chased is pretty scary, but being pursued can be worse. Few things are more terrifying than the knowledge that no matter how far you go or how fast you travel, your pursuer will keep gaining on you and eventually you'll be caught. That's the feeling that suffuses It Follows, David Robert Mitchell's suburban horror movie about a girl named Jay (Maika Monroe) who has a seemingly ordinary hookup only to realize she's been infected with a sexually transmitted ghost.
If that sounds ridiculous, well, it kinda is on its face. But Mitchell uses it as the setup for a pretty devilish little film. Jay's told the only way she can escape the evil spirit (which haunts her in some truly terrifying ways) is by sleeping with someone else to pass it on. One thing leads to another, and ultimately, she and her friends try killing it, with generally unpleasant (not to mention ambiguous) results. After the climactic conflict, Jay and her friend Paul (Keir Gilchrist) have sex…and later, Paul's seen driving past a group of prostitutes. In the film's final shot, the duo walk down a street while someone (or something?) follows behind.
Like plenty of thought-provoking cinema, much of It Follows is open to interpretation. Mitchell has only hinted at his personal point of view on the scene depicting the spirit's possible "death," but he's made it clear that he never set out to make a movie with a literal meaning, or one whose antagonist's motives were ever explained. As he's said in multiple interviews, he was originally inspired by a nightmare in which he knew he was being followed, knew he couldn't get away, and knew the people with him in the nightmare weren't able to help him. As for the ambiguity of that last shot? Totally intentional. As he told Vulture, "It allows people to make up their own mind of what it means."
From Looper.com
THE ENDING OF HORROR FILM IT FOLLOWS BY DIRECTOR
I loved the concept behind the horror movie It Follows, but I wasn’t a big fan of how it was executed — especially the second half of the movie. After it started blowing up in theaters, and more and more people were talking about how much they loved it, I decided to go and see it again to see if I missed something the first time around: Nope. I still feel the same way about it. Regardless of what I think, though, the indie film is a hit with audiences and the buzz is growing.
From Looper.com
THE ENDING OF HORROR FILM IT FOLLOWS BY DIRECTOR
I loved the concept behind the horror movie It Follows, but I wasn’t a big fan of how it was executed — especially the second half of the movie. After it started blowing up in theaters, and more and more people were talking about how much they loved it, I decided to go and see it again to see if I missed something the first time around: Nope. I still feel the same way about it. Regardless of what I think, though, the indie film is a hit with audiences and the buzz is growing.
For those of you who have seen the film and want an explanation of the ending of the movie, the director, David Robert Mitchell, offers it up in an interview with Vulture. If you haven’t seen the film, then you should know that there are SPOILERS ahead.
As I explained in my full Sundance Film Festival review, the movie "literally revolves around a sexually transmitted demon that follows the people who it becomes attached to, and its purpose is to kill them. The demon can look like anyone, and it just slowly walks and follows the person it's attached to." The climax of the film includes Jay (Maika Monroe) and the other characters banding together to attempt to rid herself from the demonic curse that haunts her. They come up with a ridiculously stupid plan to electrocute the demon in a local pool. The director even admits that it’s a stupid plan in his explanation of the ending:
“It’s the stupidest plan ever! It’s a kid-movie plan, it’s something that Scooby-Doo and the gang might think of, and that was sort of the point. What would you do if you were confronted by a monster and found yourself trapped within a nightmare? Ultimately, you have to resort to some way of fighting it that’s accessible to you in the physical world, and that’s not really going to cut it. We kind of avoid any kind of traditional setup for that sequence, because in more traditional horror films, there might be a clue that would lead them to figure out a way to destroy this monster. I intentionally avoided placing those. Instead, they do their best to accomplish something, and we witness its failure. It’s probably a very non-conventional way of approaching the third-act confrontation, but we thought it was a fun way to deal with it.”
In the final shot of the film, Jay and Paul are walking down the street holding hands, with someone walking behind them, that we all assume is the demon. In regards to that scene, the director says,
“We had a couple variations on it — I think we had some where he was really far back, and then some where no one would ever miss him — but we settled on the one where he’s there, but not too close. It allows people to make up their own mind of what it means.”
Meh. It’s pretty obvious what it means. They'll just continue to pass the demon back and fourth to each other from having sex, and deal with evading it together. That is, until the day they get in a major fight with each other, and one of them just decides to let the demon kill the other.
From GeekTyrant
You Will Never Not Understand It Follows Like This Person Does Not Understand It
Sam Adams
You Will Never Not Understand It Follows Like This Person Does Not Understand It
Sam Adams
Did you have trouble following “It Follows”? Fear not. There’s no way you had as much trouble figuring it out as the anonymous Portland, Oregon reader who wrote the Telegraph’s Tim Robey following his positive review.
To be fair, the author of 1,000-word-plus missive, does seem to have paid careful attention to the film. (There are major spoilers included, so beware.) But he or she — and, having received numerous letter of this kind back in the days when people actually sent letters, we’re going to go way out on a limb and guess “he” — seems to have missed the point entirely. Why does Maika Monroe’s character wear high heels in a movie about a sexually transmitted haunting? Because subtext, silly.
To be fair, the author of 1,000-word-plus missive, does seem to have paid careful attention to the film. (There are major spoilers included, so beware.) But he or she — and, having received numerous letter of this kind back in the days when people actually sent letters, we’re going to go way out on a limb and guess “he” — seems to have missed the point entirely. Why does Maika Monroe’s character wear high heels in a movie about a sexually transmitted haunting? Because subtext, silly.
Some of these questions are actually answered in the film, and a few — “What if the couple’s intimacy only consists of mutual masturbation, does that count? Or does there have to be physical penetration?” — indicate that the mystery writer may have thought about this whole thing a little too much.
Anyway, I’m delaying the main event. Read on, and be amazed.
I was alarmed to learn that you gave “It Follows” a positive review, and am concerned that perhaps you didn’t fully examine the film? It seems to me even a superficial examination reveals just how ludicrous the entire film is. It is, in fact, laughable from the very beginning. Why is the initial screen victim running out of her house in her underwear and red high heels? What teenage girl would be dressed like that in her home with her dad? Is this some kinky fantasy the writer/director wanted to put on film? Ask any young woman if — even when scared — she would attempt to drive wearing stiletto heels!
The entire premise of the movie — a creature that stalks you unless you have sex with someone — is ridiculous. How did this sequence of events get started? Where did the creature come from, and why would it be driven to kill the most recently infected person? In order to protect yourself from the creature you have to pay it forward (or “lay it forward” if you will). How did anyone ever figure this out? And why would that work? And supposing that the creature did work its way through killing all of those going back in the chain, then what? What would it do? What would happen to it? Hugh/ Jeff says there is “only one” of these creatures — how does he know? …
The creature can be covered by a sheet to reveal its shape to non-victims, and has to break into windows et cetera to gain physical entry to a locked residence. Clearly this is a physical being that happens to be invisible, not an incorporeal phantom. So why doesn’t Jay try running it over with the car rather than just driving away from it?
If the gunshot to the head didn’t stop it at the beach, why would they think electrocuting it would? And on that note, isn’t it irresponsible filmmaking to teach young people in the audience that they can survive throwing electrical objects into the water the way Jay does?
At the end of the film, Jay doesn’t want to say what form the creature has taken when it enters the pool room. We imagine something hideous. Then we shrug when it turns out to be just a bearded guy. Later we find out it’s her dad. I posit that it would have been more disturbing to know at the time that it was her dad.
On that note, how does the creature know what Jay’s dad looked like? Did it establish a telepathic link to her when Hugh/Jeff put his penis in her? Or is it really good at memorising portraits in the houses it enters, for future reference? …
On a more fundamental filmmaking level, the score by Disasterpiece comes across as intrusive and over-the-top. Worse, it has hokey motifs that jar with the alleged seriousness of some scenes. Furthermore, no attempt is made to give some of the characters names apart from in the credits, and even the protagonist (a woman oddly named Jay for some unexplained reason) isn’t called by name until almost halfway through the film.
And for a horror film, there are surprisingly few deaths. Apart from the mystery girl’s death that opens the film (we never find out how she related to the rest of the characters), the other main on-screen death is Greg, killed in his bedroom. Given that the creature walks toward the victim until it reaches them, how very convenient that it so seldom appears in the middle of the night while the victim is asleep! Where’s the “don’t fall asleep” warning à la invasion of the Body Snatchers and A Nightmare on Elm Street?
With so many lapses in both storytelling and filmmaking, one wonders why anyone could think highly of this sloppy and absurdly illogical film. The only way all of the above could possibly make any sense is for it to have been one of the characters’ nightmares. And of course “and they woke up and it was all a dream” is the lames of storytelling clichés.
I was alarmed to learn that you gave “It Follows” a positive review, and am concerned that perhaps you didn’t fully examine the film? It seems to me even a superficial examination reveals just how ludicrous the entire film is. It is, in fact, laughable from the very beginning. Why is the initial screen victim running out of her house in her underwear and red high heels? What teenage girl would be dressed like that in her home with her dad? Is this some kinky fantasy the writer/director wanted to put on film? Ask any young woman if — even when scared — she would attempt to drive wearing stiletto heels!
The entire premise of the movie — a creature that stalks you unless you have sex with someone — is ridiculous. How did this sequence of events get started? Where did the creature come from, and why would it be driven to kill the most recently infected person? In order to protect yourself from the creature you have to pay it forward (or “lay it forward” if you will). How did anyone ever figure this out? And why would that work? And supposing that the creature did work its way through killing all of those going back in the chain, then what? What would it do? What would happen to it? Hugh/ Jeff says there is “only one” of these creatures — how does he know? …
The creature can be covered by a sheet to reveal its shape to non-victims, and has to break into windows et cetera to gain physical entry to a locked residence. Clearly this is a physical being that happens to be invisible, not an incorporeal phantom. So why doesn’t Jay try running it over with the car rather than just driving away from it?
If the gunshot to the head didn’t stop it at the beach, why would they think electrocuting it would? And on that note, isn’t it irresponsible filmmaking to teach young people in the audience that they can survive throwing electrical objects into the water the way Jay does?
At the end of the film, Jay doesn’t want to say what form the creature has taken when it enters the pool room. We imagine something hideous. Then we shrug when it turns out to be just a bearded guy. Later we find out it’s her dad. I posit that it would have been more disturbing to know at the time that it was her dad.
On that note, how does the creature know what Jay’s dad looked like? Did it establish a telepathic link to her when Hugh/Jeff put his penis in her? Or is it really good at memorising portraits in the houses it enters, for future reference? …
On a more fundamental filmmaking level, the score by Disasterpiece comes across as intrusive and over-the-top. Worse, it has hokey motifs that jar with the alleged seriousness of some scenes. Furthermore, no attempt is made to give some of the characters names apart from in the credits, and even the protagonist (a woman oddly named Jay for some unexplained reason) isn’t called by name until almost halfway through the film.
And for a horror film, there are surprisingly few deaths. Apart from the mystery girl’s death that opens the film (we never find out how she related to the rest of the characters), the other main on-screen death is Greg, killed in his bedroom. Given that the creature walks toward the victim until it reaches them, how very convenient that it so seldom appears in the middle of the night while the victim is asleep! Where’s the “don’t fall asleep” warning à la invasion of the Body Snatchers and A Nightmare on Elm Street?
With so many lapses in both storytelling and filmmaking, one wonders why anyone could think highly of this sloppy and absurdly illogical film. The only way all of the above could possibly make any sense is for it to have been one of the characters’ nightmares. And of course “and they woke up and it was all a dream” is the lames of storytelling clichés.
By Jesse Gumbarge
David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows comes with a concept so simple and genius that it’s hard to believe nobody’s thought of it before. After Jay (aces newcomer Maika Monroe) has sex for the first time with her new boyfriend, Hugh (Jake Weary), he tells her that he’s just passed something onto her. No, it’s not an STD—he’s just given a sexually transmitted ghost/monster, one that takes the form of various people only the inflicted person can see, and only he or she can see those people. You’re dead if the creature catches up to you. The only way to save yourself is to have sex with someone else and pass the nightmare onto them.
It Follows is like nothing genre fans have seen before, and yet it owes so much to what came before it. A cross-breeding of tropes from the past half a century of horror cinema, the movie is gorgeously shot, vividly told, and full of teen characters that have an unusual amount of compassion for one another.
Today, we are going to be talking about the film’s fairly indistinct ending and what it possibly means. So, needless to say, a SPOILER ALERT is in full effect. Before we talk about the film’s finale, however, let’s take a look back at the events leading up to it.
After Jay initially gets infected by her boyfriend, she soon realizes that everything that he told her was indeed the truth. The next day at school, Jay encounters an old woman in a night gown slowly approaching her, prompting her to hightail it out of there.
Jay’s friends – Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Paul (Keir Gilchrist), her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe) and her neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) – ultimately choose to accept the crazy premise that’s being presented and decide to help their friend in any way that they can. This begins by helping Jay find Hugh (whose real name turns out to be Jeff Redmond). He basically reiterates that her only chance is to pass it in on to someone else or get as far away from it as you can and hope to buy some time.
With that, the gang of friends head up to Greg’s lakehouse, where Jay learns to fire a gun. The entity, taking multiple guises, eventually catches up and attacks Jay on the lakeshore. She shoots it, only momentarily incapacitating it. Jay flees the house alone in Greg’s car but narrowly avoids hitting a truck and instead crashes into a cornfield. She wakes up in the hospital with a broken arm, surrounded by her friends.
In the hospital, Greg sleeps with Jay to pass on the curse, and insists he does not believe in it. Later, Jay sees Greg smash the window to his own house and enter. She tries to warn the real Greg on the telephone but he does not answer. She runs into the house and finds the entity in the form of Greg’s half-naked mother knocking on his door; it jumps on Greg and has sex with him (or something to that effect) as he dies.
Jay flees by car and spends the night by the beach. On a beach in the morning, Jay sees three young men on a boat. She undresses and walks into the water. It’s heavily implied that she had sex with at least one (if not all) of these men in order to buy some more time.
Back home, Paul expresses his feelings about Jay sleeping with Greg and not him; offering to have sex with her. She refuses… for now.
The group then forms a plan to kill the entity by luring it into an abandoned swimming pool and dropping electrical devices into the water to electrocute it. Jay, waiting in the pool, spots the entity and realizes it has taken the appearance of her father as it throws the devices at her. Firing at an invisible target, Paul accidentally wounds Yara, but shoots the entity in the head, causing it to fall into the pool. As it drags Jay underwater, he shoots it again and Jay escapes. The entity leaves a large cloud of blood but no body is present.
Afterwards. Jay and Paul have sex. We then see Paul drive past some past prostitutes in a seedy part of town. Sometime later, Jay and Paul hold hands and walk down the street while someone follows close behind. Cut to the end credits.
So many questions, it’s hard to even find a starting point. Did Paul pick up a prostitute? Did Jay have sex with those guys on the boat? Why does the thing usually wear white? Why was Jay’s pool destroyed? Does the thing sex people to death or what? Why is the thing so angry? Why!?!
As far as the film’s final scene, it seems to be up to each individual viewer to surmise whether the kids beat the thing or whether they’re still being followed. As for the moments leading up to the finale, this is what the director himself had to say when he spoke to Vulture, with regards to the character’s anomalous attempt to get rid of the monster:
“It’s the stupidest plan ever! It’s a kid-movie plan, it’s something that Scooby-Doo and the gang might think of, and that was sort of the point. What would you do if you were confronted by a monster and found yourself trapped within a nightmare? Ultimately, you have to resort to some way of fighting it that’s accessible to you in the physical world, and that’s not really going to cut it. We kind of avoid any kind of traditional setup for that sequence, because in more traditional horror films, there might be a clue that would lead them to figure out a way to destroy this monster. I intentionally avoided placing those. Instead, they do their best to accomplish something, and we witness its failure. It’s probably a very non-conventional way of approaching the third-act confrontation, but we thought it was a fun way to deal with it.”
As stated before, in the final shot of the film, Jay and Paul are walking down the street holding hands, with someone walking behind them, that we all assume is the demon. In regards to that scene, the director says:
“We had a couple variations on it — I think we had some where he was really far back, and then some where no one would ever miss him — but we settled on the one where he’s there, but not too close. It allows people to make up their own mind of what it means.”
Perhaps if Jay and Paul continue to have sex with one another, they’ll continue to transfer the demon back and fourth until it becomes utterly confused and simply moves on. Who knows. One thing’s for certain. You know how Jaws made you never want to swim in an ocean again? Or how Psycho turned showers into potential death traps? Well, It Follows could ultimately become the catalyst that popularizes abstinence nationwide. Seriously, this movie could end up closing more legs than a Bill Belichick sex tape.
From JarvisTV
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