At the start of David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 film It Follows, protagonist Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex with a young man who calls himself Hugh (Jake Weary). He then chloroforms her, ties her to a wheelchair, and explains that a creature—referred to as “It”—is going to follow her until she has sex with someone else. The day after Jay’s assault, she stands in front of the bathroom mirror, looking down into her underwear, presumably examining whether “Hugh” left any noticeable physical changes. In a larger, symbolic sense, she is reflecting on her identity—asking herself whether her sexual encounter transformed her in some way. Jay is startled out of her reflection when a ball hits the window. Though Jay does not see him, the ball was thrown by a neighbor boy who is crouching out of sight to peek at the half-naked Jay. This screenshot encapsulates It Follows‘ running motifs of sexual surveillance and the transition from childhood to adulthood. By combining Jay’s internal contemplation and external objectification, It Follows demonstrates how entering adulthood entails submitting one’s body to both self-reflection and public consumption.
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Jay’s physical examination of her body symbolically reflects the larger question of how sex changes one’s identity. Although most young adults are not concerned about contracting a supernatural STI, they still struggle with the question of whether sex is transforming or even damaging them. This critical self-reflection is not part of the adulthood that Jay and her friends envisioned for themselves. Before her assault, Jay reveals that her childhood fantasies used to innocently center around “being old enough to go on dates and drive around with friends in their cars.” She does both of these things within the movie, but she is unsatisfied, asking, “Now that we’re old enough, where the hell do we go?”
Jay: “Now that we’re old enough, where the hell do we go?”
As young adults, Jay and her friends now have the freedom to physically move around, as well as to smoke, drink, and have sex. However, Jay is still not the adult she imagined she would be because the mature activities she thought would make her happy are actually unfulfilling freedoms. Sex, for example, entertains her for a moment, but ultimately leaves her questioning her identity and ability to trust others. While the three teens are playing Old Maid, Yara (Olivia Luccardi) reads aloud a passage from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: “I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction—if a house is falling upon you, for instance—one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one’s eyes, and wait, come what may.” Kelly (Lili Sepe) responds, “That’s why we’re drinking on the porch,” implying that they are already waiting for some metaphorical house to fall. In It Follows, then, adulthood is not an escape into freedom but rather a condemnation to “inevitable destruction”; likewise, drinking is not the fun party game it used to be, but rather a way to numb the body and mind while enduring a slow-burning demise.
Kelly, Paul, and Yara play Old Maid
The ball thrown in the bathroom scene of It Follows serves as a reminder that even though adults can usually choose what to do with their bodies, they cannot always choose what is done to their bodies. Jay examines her own body, but she is not the only one who is doing so: the neighbor boys follow her around, trying to see her in her bathing suit or her underwear. When she first notices them, she merely laughs and tells them, “I see you,” clearly unshaken by their presence. However, this lighthearted interaction occurs before she is sexually violated and stalked.
When the ball hits the window, the viewer must first suspect it was thrown by “It” before discovering that it was the neighbor. This draws a direct comparison between the sexual stalker and the seemingly harmless boys who are performing the same basic function. Like “It,” their pursuit is sexually motivated; unlike “It,” they were not drawn to Jay by any of her actions, but rather the inescapable fact that she has a mature female body. The boys are fully disconnected from the supernatural element of the film’s horror—they began chasing Jay before “It” did and will likely continue to chase her long after “It” is passed on. Their existence is thus arguably more disturbing than “It’s” because they manifest the sexual pursuit that occurs in reality. The monster can be left onscreen, but these seemingly harmless voyeurs are the predators who may be found in the real world of the viewer.
Paul looks at Jay
Though these boys are mere children now, It Follows provides unsettling models for what they may grow into. Paul (Keir Gilchrist) is the most innocent parallel; he, too, has a boyish fascination with looking at Jay, to the point where Kelly jokingly warns her, “You should be […] worried about waking up and finding Paul humping your leg.” Paul pleads innocent and Jay ignores her sister, but the pair later reveal that Paul has not been allowed to sleep over at Jay’s house in recent years because of his crush. Though Jay may not believe Paul would go as far as to “hump her leg,” his sleepover ban suggests that she does not fully trust one of her closest friends to respect her bodily autonomy.
The boys seem most like Paul in their first appearance. They are spying on Jay’s vulnerable body, but they are contained behind distance and a fence, and the body they are seeing is accessible to any other neighbors outside. Like Paul, they are interested but not completely obtrusive.
The boys spy on Jay (Maika Monroe) before her encounter with “Hugh”
Their next appearance is more sinister. Here, moments after the initial screenshot of Jay in the bathroom, a boy is trespassing on Jay’s property in order to spy on a private moment in her own house. This scene suggests that a more appropriate model for the boys’ future is Jeff. Like the boys, he uses Jay’s body as a vehicle to fulfill his own desires—and like the ball, he is a danger that Jay does not recognize. He lies in order to seduce her and then immediately betrays her. His motivation may have been unrealistically supernatural, but the horror created by his character plays on the real fear that women cannot trust sexual partners not to chloroform and kidnap them, let alone to divulge their STI status. By taking advantage of Jay—like Paul and more importantly like Jeff—the neighbor boys use their seemingly harmless interest in Jay to reinforce the film’s theme that women’s bodies are constantly watched and consumed.
The boy spies on Jay after her encounter with “Hugh”
The supernatural elements of It Follows are certainly the most horror-inducing, but the shot of Jay in the bathroom—in which a young adult has a typical young adult crisis and a normal boy does something immature—reveals a differently-horrifying element of realism. In the realistic, human characters of Jeff and the neighbors (along with Paul, to a lesser extent), It Follows demonstrates that the real world is not exempt from the type of sexual predation exemplified by “It.” Even private moments in the bathroom can be subject to public examination, and real people stalk women without needing supernatural motivation. The image of Jay assessing her post-sex body reminds the viewer that this is all part of the disillusionment of growing up: dreams wear off, freedom is neither fulfilling nor cheap, and our bodies are subject to public consumption. This scene from It Follows proves that horror need not necessarily be supernatural: it can exist in the simple reproduction of reality.
Nicole Reisert is currently a senior at Lehigh University. She is pursuing a BA in English and Psychology with a minor in Theatre.
You can stream It Follows on Amazon:
For more on how the horror film explores issues of sexuality, see articles on Slumber Party Massacre, 
