What Is the Entity in It Follows?

When David Robert Mitchell's It Follows came out in 2015, it was one of the surprise horror hits of the year. Not only did it help turn its lead, Maika Monroe, into a modern final girl, but it showed that horror could retain the themes of the past while also being more elevated and weird. The characters in It Follows are some unusual teens, but what they're running from is even more strange. An entity is passed down through sex, leading to any horny young adult in its path being its potential next victim. Those themes tie into the '80s slasher trope that sex kills. Although familiar in tone, we've never seen a horror villain like the entity in It Follows. So, what exactly is it?

The Entity in 'It Follows' Is Passed Down Through Sex

Image via Animal Kingdom

It Follows starts off with a young woman named Annie (Bailey Spry) running out of her home, caught in the middle of getting dressed or undressed, and still wearing high heels. Something that has deeply scared her has Annie on the run, but whatever terrifies her, only she can see it. Her father and neighbor are completely confused about why she is so shaken. Annie flees in a car and ends up at a beach, and while we don't see her die or who did it, we see her body the next morning, her leg savagely snapped in half. The entity in It Follows is has incredible strength.

What we learn about the entity comes in the form of exposition from Hugh (Jake Weary). After he and Jay (Monroe) have sex in his car for the first time, he uses chloroform to knock her out, before restraining her to a wheelchair. When she comes to, Hugh reveals to Jay and the audience what is going on. There is something after him that was passed down through sex. The only way to get rid of it is to have sex with someone else. You're now in the clear, unless they die, in which case the entity comes back after you. Hugh warns Jay that it can change its form, oftentimes going for someone you know as a way to get close to you. To prove himself, Hugh shows Jay that a naked woman is slowly walking their way. It will never run, but it will also never stop, walking slowly in a straight line until it reaches its target.

It's Never Revealed Where the Entity in 'It Follows' Comes From

The best and most frustrating part about It Follows is that we never find out exactly what the entity is. There are no stereotypical lazy horror scenes of Jay and her friends getting on Google, going to the local library, or meeting with some expert who can tell them where this monster came from. The less we know, the more frightening it is. We don't even know what its true form is — if it even has one. Some of the best horror movies have done the same, keeping their monsters in the dark to heighten our fears. Whether that's keeping the shark in Jaws below the water for most of the runtime or never showing us the witch in The Blair Witch Project, what we don't see makes our imagination, and the imaginations of the characters, run wild. Even when we do see more, such as Greg (Daniel Zovatto) being killed by the entity in the shape of his mother, we don't know how he died or why it's rubbing up against his dead body.

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The Protagonists in 'It Follows' Have No Idea How to Defeat the Entity in 'It Follows'

If there is no scene in It Follows where we learn about the entity's origins, then there also can't be one where learning how to defeat it is revealed either. All Jay and her friends can do is run. That's further complicated by the fact that only the one carrying the curse, in this case Jay, can see the entity. It is completely invisible to her friends, though they can see its action. When it throws a brick through a glass window, Paul (Keir Gilchrist) hears it and sees the broken glass. When the entity lifts Jay's hair on the beach, her sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe), sees her hair move. When Paul swings a chair at it, we can see it hit something that's not visible, which means that it has a form. This is further shown when it pushes Paul down. The entity will not attack someone it's not attached to unless it's threatened.

The finale of It Follows shows our heroes trying to electrocute the entity in a swimming pool, a plan that might be silly, but what else can they do? We see that the entity is smart, refusing to get in the pool (does this mean it can be electrocuted?), but anytime it's shot, it gets back up. We also see how well it somehow knows its victims, as it can take the form of Jay's dead father. In the end, one more gunshot to the head seemingly defeats the entity, although the open ending brings no clear answer. Next year, David Robert Mitchell and Maika Monroe return for a sequel to It Follows called They Follow. Perhaps then someone will finally know what the entity really is.

It Follows is available to watch on Netflix in the U.S.

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