Wherever she is in the world, this thing, which can take any human form, and which no uninfected person can see, is walking directly toward her, at a steady but moderate pace, with murder on its mind. It can easily be outrun, but it never stops coming, and the only way to get rid of it is to pass it on to somebody else via sexual intercourse—though if it kills that person, it reverts right back to stalking you.
Mostly, though, It Follows just goes to town with its spectacularly creepy conceit, which requires constant scanning of the frame for innocuous-looking extras who might be on the right trajectory. Cast members learned how to work with bees, collecting runaway swarms from trees and extracting honey from the combs; the most affecting sequence finds Gelsomina and her father hunkered down together beneath a tarp in the rain, using their bodies to keep the lids from blowing off boxed hives in a windstorm, because there are too few stones in the area to hold them down.
A minor work, but thoroughly enjoyable. The latter possibility contributed to my tentative feminist reading, and does appear to have been intended, at least to some degree. Unmarried, childless farmer Mary Bee Cuddy Hilary Swank volunteers to transport the loonies to Iowa, where they can be properly cared for, and more or less blackmails a grizzled claim jumper Jones into assisting her on the five- or six-week journey. Hausner has a loyal following—her previous film, Lourdes, was highly acclaimed—but while I admire her formal rigor, her sensibility is a little bloodless for my taste.
Whaddaya need, a road map? Newsreel Essential Podcast The Writers. It Follows. A series of pieces from and about the Cannes Film Festival.
