Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media

It Follows: Horror in a Straight Line

by Ben Dalton

“It Follows (2014), directed by David Robert Mitchell, owes its genius to the simple violence of the straight line. When the film’s protagonist Jay (Maika Monroe) is followed–mercilessly, anonymously, slowly–by an unexplained force, it is the straight line that choreographs this following. Assuming various arbitrary human forms, the It advances directly towards its victims at a measured, unchanged pace and without divergence from its direct path. ‘It follows’–a trite double-entendre implying both active pursuit and banal deduction–denotes less a conscious hunt than an ordinal succession along a rigid, geometric track. The film derives its affective kick not from any discrete body, be it following or followed, monstrous or human, but from this hideous, existential geometry”… [Continue Reading Here]