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It Follows is a critically acclaimed independent horror film, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. This groundbreaking film pays homage to slasher films of the past while at the same time rejuvenating this otherwise tired genre with a complex narrative and visual aesthetic that makes it an original film in its own right. The movie centres around Jay, a young teenager, and her attempts to evade an unnamed entity that is transmitted from victim to victim through sexual intercourse. The film has been interpreted in various ways, including as a parable for HIV (Lyne 2015) and as a film about teenage sexual anxiety (Parkin 2015). The film, however, contains a depth and complexity of material that leaves it open to a richer interpretation, informed by psychoanalytic theories of unconscious experience and adolescent sexuality.
The film opens on a peaceful suburban neighbourhood. A young woman dressed only in sleepwear runs frantically out of her house, looks around the street in terror, and to the bewilderment of her father, drives away into the night. The next morning we see her lying dead on a beach, her right leg sticking up into the air and hyperextended nearly ninety degrees at the knee, as if subjected to an inhuman force.
In the next scene we see Jay, a 19-year-old woman, floating peacefully in an above-ground pool in her backyard. Subsequent scenes illustrate Jay's typical suburban life, shared with her sister Kelly, and friends Yara and Paul. Jay goes on a date with a young man, Hugh, whom she has recently met. During the date Hugh leads Jay abruptly out of a movie theatre after seeing a girl in a yellow dress whom Jay herself cannot see. On a subsequent date, parked behind an abandoned building, Jay and Hugh have intercourse for the first time in the back of Hugh's car. While Jay lies in the back of Hugh's car, Hugh renders her unconscious by putting a rag over her mouth. Jay awakens, still dressed only in her underwear, tied to a