It Follows

Movies
41

Having not seen the film but having had it ruined thanks to a very loudmouth friend at dinner, it kinda seems like the ‘It’ lends itself to some trolling. For instance:

Let us say that ‘It’ is after Cindy.
Cindy has sex with Kyle so ‘It’ goes after Kyle.
Kyle has sex with Rachael so ‘It’ goes after Rachael.
Rachael has sex with Doug so ‘It’ goes after Doug.
Then Doug has sex with Cindy…does ‘It’ go after Cindy? And if it kills Cindy, are the others off the hook? Loop complete!

Bah, this is irrelevant anyway…does make me laugh, though.

42

Spoiled or not, you should see this movie.

43

What Wholly said. Seriously.

And let your friend know we will not be inviting him to board game night.

-xtien

44

So I’m listening to the podcast now and I’ll be damned if you guys aren’t winning me over on the film. While it can be a huge bummer sometimes hearing you take a part a film I enjoyed but you guys did not (the last few Nolan films, for example), I absolutely adore how you’re able to make me come around on films I didn’t enjoy at first. Thank you.

45

For both our sakes’, I’m really sorry I wasn’t there for the Interstellar podcast. :(

-Tom
46

I finally saw this. I thought it was super creepy and very well done…except for the ending. It felt to me like the writer had come up with this really clever story but had no idea how to end it in a way that was worthy of everything to that point. So let’s just leave up to the audience to make up their own ending- lazy! It’s sort of a Blair Witch Project ending and I hate those kinds.

Otherwise I was impressed. I caught on to the timeless aspect and it worked for this story. For me it gave everything a nightmarish feeling, like things get all mashed up in your dreams and shouldn’t be there with other things that don’t match the time or place. Stuff like the guy downplaying his family’s vacation home but dude, you have a vacation home! And it’s a nice one! There’s a lot of weird stuff like that in the movie. The entire movie is crammed with weird stuff.

My take, she has sex with the guys on the boat. I think it was made clear enough, she was stripped down and in the water. Btw, that is the right way to tell the audience what they need to know without spelling it out imo, compared to the end of the film. I think the boat scene wasn’t made more graphic because then it risks making the scene about promiscuity rather than her attempt to save her life. Also, the main reason to think it didn’t happen, her denial, isn’t compelling. Consider who she is talking to in that scene. She’s obviously lying because what is she going to say “Don’t worry, I had sex with some random guys”? She’s aware her friend is of a delicate nature when it comes to who she favors with her, uh, favors.

On multiple partners, I think each one counts as one. So let’s say 3 guys and one girl counts as 4 steps up the ladder for It. Guy 4 is stalked down, guy 3, guy 2…all the way down to the girl who was the origin. This is because it happened in one encounter, so they are all in it together(so to speak).

I tend to agree with those saying it’s more a metaphor for sexual abuse. This is because there are clear indications of this theme, the girl getting dumped on the street in front of her home after being abused on a date for example. But also because the rules of this threat are abusive in nature. The guy having sex with her was inflicting violence on her, taking advantage of her. She in turn is the experienced partner who is taking advantage of eager but clueless suitors later. There’s no way you work this without hurting others.

Besides the ending the only other places the movie falters is when characters, who know they are being stalked, choose densely wooded or tall grass areas to hide out. This thing has to walk to you, how is it that you don’t pick wide open areas where you can see in every direction? A Walmart parking lot would be better than the woods.

Last but not least, there’s this great MR James story “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You” that this movie resembles in some ways. That story is just as creepy and I think makes a good companion piece to this movie. Who knows, maybe the writer was influenced by it?

47

What was your issue with the ending? You mention hating it several times but don’t explain why. Do you mean the open-endedness?

If you meant that you hated the lack of resolution, I’d argue you missed the metaphor. It Follows isn’t about sexual abuse, it’s about death. Death is inevitable. You can’t bargain with it, or try to find a loophole in the rules, or fuck it away, or catch it in a fancy scheme to electrocute it in a swimming pool. The only thing you can do is resign yourself to it, accept whoever you’re going to live the rest of your life with, and stop looking over your shoulder.

-Tom, who loved the ending

48

I would have thought logically(!) it would be passed to the first guy she sleeps with, then he would need to have sex with another of the guys on the boat to pass it on to him…

Not sure what would happen in the case of double penetration however… ;)

49

Death as the metaphor doesn’t work for me in this movie because they are all young people. Death isn’t normally expected to be in the near future for any of them. Yet, there It is. This same story, with elderly actors? That would be when I’d see death as the metaphor.

The ending is lame because it takes no stand. Maybe that person in the background is It, maybe not. All that red stuff in the pool was a new development, what did it mean? Who knows, maybe nothing, maybe everything.

Logically(?) a sexual encounter can be considered one event, no matter how many people are involved. So I think It accumulates targets en masse with group encounters. That is, I think It attaches Itself via that entire event, not just the contact between two people. If there had been one guy, or two guys on the boat, or 10, it’s all the same. Even more importantly, to her the guys on the boat serve her purpose. Whether It goes after the one guy who was first, or all of them, she gets time safe. Remember, she didn’t pick the boat of guys, they were what’s was available then and there. It’s not like she decided to try more than one to see if it would buy her extra time.

This reminds that I’ve thought about it and I don’t see how this can really go on for long, which is why I think this is a nightmare in movie form. As we saw with the guy across the street, who didn’t make it past the first try(and he knew what he was doing), I don’t see a long line of people passing this on. I think the movie tries to imply that Jay is the last in this line but I don’t see that as realistic. The guys on the boat for instance, did she give them the rundown on the rules and would they think she was anything but crazy? To stay away from It you’d have to give up a normal life. So It would have no trouble taking everyone out, which shrinks the line, then taking out the final person. What next? As a nightmare it makes sense since nightmares don’t obey logic and don’t end until you wake up.

50

I think the point of it is that these are young people transitioning into adulthood. Casual sex and its potential for consequences is the metaphor (and then the reality via death) for that transition. Suddenly, these things one does in youth because of a sense of immortality become things one recognizes as Serious Business. In other words, they’re at the transition from youthful eternity to reality of growing older and all that entails.

51

I’m pretty sure portraying everything the characters do as futile qualifies as a stand. In fact, I can think of no more decisive stand than inevitability!

Of course, if your interpretation of the movie is that it’s about venereal disease, that’s probably not going to read very well. :)

-Tom
52

I thought about the STD angle, they all pass it around after all, but I thought it was too obvious and this movie does not seem to want to be obvious. So I figured there had to be something else. The real story, imo, starts with the girls’s date which of course was abusive, so I watched it through that lens.

Was it all futile though? The movie does not say that. After the pool scene, which could have been the end of It, we get no indication that it wasn’t the end of it. The characters act as though they think they failed, but that doesn’t mean they failed. Presumably, the one night stand who gave it to the first guy is alive and well, so is that first guy who gave it to this girl. The girl is also alive and well at the end. Futile struggle is not how I see it.

53

I still think it’s about love.

-xtien

54

The first date was abusive because of the curse and not the other way round. It only got abusive because he had to show her the threat and explain the rules to her so she wouldn’t just die and he’d be back at square one.

I don’t know what it’s supposed to represent, I’m not convinced that there’s a “correct” interpretation of it all.

I find the movie passable but it had too many of the classical annoyances built in to make some scenes work at all. People that refuse to believe in the main character with supernatural stuff going on right in front of them. Supposedly smart people doing stupid shit 24/7.

The break-in scene where the guy doesn’t answer the phone, doesn’t react to a window breaking in a dead silent house and face checks a door in the middle of the night knowing there’s a curse around that fucks you up something bad. Yeah, no. Too silly to be scary.

The changing of the rules didn’t help at all. How did the first victim die on the beach? Did she commit suicide? Why are some victims “raped” before they die, why do some people die instantly, others get to fist fight the “monster”. Bullets are ignored -> bullets kill.
Make up your mind what this threat is please.

55

I think the final shot of the movie indicates that they did in fact fail to destroy (for lack of a better term) the creature. I think there is a nobility in Jay and Paul when they are walking down the sidewalk at the end of the movie. Paul at least has found love, potentially martyring himself in the process while Jay finds a companion whose eyes are now open and able to see the world how she see’s it.

56

That would have to be the strangest method of suicide I have ever seen.

Who died instantly?

57

Suicide as in let herself get caught on the open beach.

The kid who thought his mom was banging on the door was pacified in seconds / dead.

58

Are you not saying he’s also the one that got raped. If he died in seconds then I would say he wasn’t raped because any violation would simply be done to his remains. Sorry if I sound dickish, just lost a bunch of saved games because of ******* Paradox and their new patch and I’m furious. My apologies.

59

If you’re watching It Follows to discover the precise methodology of how some inscrutable demon kills people, I’d say you’re watching the wrong movie. Fortunately, those aren’t the rules this movie is concerned with. There are plenty of crappy horror films that can oblige you on that front.

Here you go.

-Tom
60

It leaves the possibility open. There’s someone walking down the sidewalk behind them. Is it the creature? We’ve certainly been trained to think so. But there are other shots in the movie that seem to suggest its presence that turn out to be ordinary passers-by. We don’t know. Can’t know. I think that’s pretty darn creepy myself.