It Follows

Even condoms won’t protect you from this human form of HIV.

This movie functions as a teenage chain letter gone terribly wrong. The movie opens with a young girl fleeing her home partially clothed, only to drive to a beach where you see her leaving an apologetic phone message for her parents. The next morning she is found horribly dismembered laying in the sand, and you grip your seat with the knowledge that you have invited something very wicked into your cinematic life.

You next see another teenage girl, Jay (Miaka Monroe), going out on a date. After enjoying having sex in the backseat of a car, her boyfriend uses a cloth  to suddenly anesthetize her.

Jay wakes up the next morning finding herself tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse. Trying to apologize, her boyfriend informs her that while he has been pursued by unknown creatures, the only way to save himself was to have sex and let his would-be lover absorb his curse. You immediately know that these two are not going to be sending endearing Valentine’s Day cards to each other.

After Jay is dumped back onto her front yard, she tries to tell her sister and friends this horror story that she can’t tell to the police. The rest of the film centers on her being pursued by ghastly, naked characters that no one else can see but her. You quickly learn the meaning of the title of this movie.

This is really a film where teenage sex becomes a weapon. With most people thinking that you may be clinically insane, what would you do if the only way to save your life was to have intercourse with another person and let them deal with your nightmare? Then again, your “infection” never leaves, as if the last recipient is caught and killed, the creatures then work their way backwards down the sexual ladder.

Some reviewers have gone crazy reviewing this film, some calling it one of the great horror movies in the last 10 years. While it does resemble some of the emotional horror experienced by the humans trapped in a house as they are attacked by cannibalistic zombies in Night of the Living Dead (1968), It Follows doesn’t have the same unique impact as Chloë Grace Moritz’s teenage vampire in Let Me In (2010).

Sure, it is original in some ways, but will you really care?