It Follows (2014) is a bold and supremely chilling horror story starring Maika Monroe as Jay, a Detroit-area teenage girl who become pursued incessantly by an evil specter. After a romantic date that ends in a sexual tryst with the winsome Hugh (Jake Weary), Jay is informed that she will now be stalked by a haunting entity that only she can see—and that is able to impersonate anyone she knows.
The demon is intent on haunting Jay until it destroys her entirely, only then to shift its focus to the person who transmitted its presence to her: her most recent sexual companion. Jay enlists her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe) along with their friends Paul (Keir Gilchrist) and Yara (Olivia Luccardi) to desperately elude the monster in a dramatic flight strewn with grisly casualties—culminating in a terrifying and electrifying climactic confrontation.
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (The Myth of the American Sleepover, Under the Silver Lake), It Follows is a strikingly well-constructed tale of horror and psychological distress, serving as a wry allegory to the spread of sexually transmitted disease. Delivered with a visceral and haunting air of dream logic, Mitchell’s film comes through as an intelligent, evocative and highly original creation—one of the finest horror films of the entire decade.
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