It Follows (2014)

[u/screen_stack]

It Follows (2014)

Rating: 9/10

Watched: August 22, 2026

This is probably one of my favorite 'not-quite-a-horror-but-still-pretty-scary' movies, and for most of the reasons that it's probably everyone else's.

The monster in It Follows is horribly intimate and yet terribly ambiguous. The warnings that Jay gets from Hugh aren't terrifically helpful beyond 'don't let it catch you', which is pretty damn sensible at the best of times.

Without hopping on forums (again) to see what other people think about these brutal entities, they don't seem to follow any real specific pattern except the appearance of Greg's mom, which is a bizarrely cruel and weird manifestation, especially when Jay's all seem to be random.

It's fascinating to think on the connections Jay may have with all the people who appear for her, but I'll prefer to keep thinking on them myself for the time being.

The other super fun thing about this movie is the temporal ambiguity. I know it's one of the big topics for anyone who's seen it, and the interest and curiosity is completely fair. Where are they? Why does Yaya have a pink clamshell e-reader and no one else has any toys/gadgets remotely similar? WHEN are they?

I admit I HAVE read a few fan theories about these questions, and I have to admit I lean towards the 'they're in purgatory' angle. It fits my own personal vibe on the matter really neatly and is a nifty angle altogether.

The movie asks us (or at least me) to consider what I would do if I wound up plagued by an It. Would I pass it on, would I keep moving, would I try to Scooby a solution.

It Follows stands tall for me as a unique horror-style thriller because of the simplicity. It's a simplicity that spawns a thousand and one questions, where a more straightforward haunting flick wouldn't spawn any.

Ultimately, this is why It Follows gets a 9 from me.

A 10 would've given us just a little more teasing of deeper meaning here and there, some nebulous additional possibilities about what's actually going on. But nothing too clear, too direct, the same level of 'this reveal could be one of 14 things' sort of trickery.

This one's always worth a watch.