WARNING: SPOILERS

It’s a metaphor for STDs, as well as time and death. It’s a warning against sex and a warning to have sex. It’s also a horror version of the relentlessness of the Terminator—as if the Terminator weren’t horror enough.

“It”is the it of “It Follows,” which turns out to be a great title. Because we don’t know enough about “It” to call it anything more than “It”—that most open-ended of pronouns. About all we know is what the title tells us: It follows. And It kills.

I’m not a horror fan but I like some high-end horror: “The Babadook,” “The Others,” “El Orfanato,” “The Conjuring,” “The Changeling.” This fits with those. It’s quiet, moody, beautifully photographed, nightmarish. It lets the horror come to us.

Smell ya later
Writer-director David Robert Mitchell (“The Myth of the American Sleepover”) shows us the consequences in a kind of cold open. A barefoot teenage girl runs screaming from her house as if pursued, is persuaded back inside the house, then bolts. She peels out in her car. The next morning we see her by the beach, dead. The bottom half of one leg is twisted toward her head; the bottom half of the other leg is missing. Consequences.

At which point we begin to follow Jay (Maika Monroe), a pretty blonde teenager in various stages of legginess (shorts, swimsuit, underwear), hanging with friends and family in a suburb of Detroit. It’s mostly friends. Are adults around? I don’t remember them much. Jay’s coterie, including sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), smart girl Yara (Olivia Luccardi, the Velma of the group), and nerdy boy Paul (Keir Gilchrist, mooning after Jay), watch bad 1950s horror/monster movies on TV while she goes on a date with a new guy, Hugh (Jake Weary). They seem stuck and purposeless. It kind of reminds me of summers after fifth or sixth grade, when all the kids in the neighborhood would watch “Andy Griffith” reruns, stupid game shows, and play cards like “War.” Before sex kicked in.

Here, sex kicks in. Jay and Hugh have the classic teenage kind—in the backseat of a big American car—before he administers the classic postcoital chloroform. When Jay wakes, she’s tied to a chair in the sketchy area under a bridge, and Hugh is trying to explain all about “It.”

Because Hugh was infected, and she had sex with him, she’s now infected; and It, who was pursuing him, is now pursuing her. It walks, It doesn’t run, and only the infected can see It. It also changes form. It can be anything: man, woman, white, black, young, old. You won’t know it’s It until It gets you. And the only way to get rid of It is to pay it forward: have sex with someone else. But if It catches and kills that someone else, then It’ll come back for you.

Those are the rules. Smell ya later.

It seems awful, what Hugh does to Jay, but it turns out to be a masterstroke of strategy compared with what Jay and her friends wind up doing. Hugh is Eisenhower at D-Day in comparison.

The friends initially don’t know whether to believe Jay or not—since they can’t see It—but at a beach they flee to, It grabs Jay by the hair, and they fight it off and flee again. They keep fleeing and returning. They keep going out to come back. Kind of the cycle the girl in the beginning took—serpentine. The older neighbor boy with the hot rod, Greg (Daniel Zovatto), joins them, and ends up having sex with Jay, but doesn’t seem to realize the gravity of the situation. He’s young, and stupid with youth, and you look at him and go, “Yeah, he’s dead.” Which he is. Which means It’s going after Jay again.

Why do they set up the final confrontation in the swimming pool? When did they figure out It doesn’t swim? And why did they think they could electrocute It? It’s really one of the worst strategies ever. Sit Jay in the middle of a pool, surrounded by appliances, and wait for It to show up. When It does, It’s the first to use the appliances—throwing them at Jay helpless in the pool. After Paul shoots, It falls in the pool, but grabs a fleeing Jay. She escapes with bruises around her ankle after Paul keeps shooting It. Is It dead? She crawls forward to peer into the pool. You half-expect It to leap out again, per every horror film ever, but Mitchell is made of better stuff. Instead, he shows us the pool filling with blood.

Except the nightmare doesn’t go away. Jay finally has sex with Paul, then Paul visits some prostitutes, and that’s how they pay it forward; that’s how they get rid of It—if It still lives. But it’s a bad strategy. Sure, the prostitute will have sex with John, and John with his wife (maybe), and she with ... ? Who? Won’t It get her, then him, then the prostitute, and Paul and Jay will be running again?

That’s the fear. So the movie ends with Paul and Jay walking in the neighborhood, holding hands less from love than fear, while someone walks behind them. Is it It? Who knows?

Great ending. It doesn’t let us know. It doesn’t let us out.

Google Maps
I have so many questions:

• What about condoms? Is it the sex act itself that leaves its calling card or something else? 
• Is there any way to put a tracking device on It?
• Who discovered all this intel in the first place?
• If It can only walk, and not use transportation, then why not lure It to L.A. and go live in New York? Walking that, according to Google, would take 909 hours, or 37.8 days, assuming an entity that never gets tired. That’s some breathing room. After 30 days, say, then fly back to L.A. And so on. Or would It wise up eventually and be waiting for you in one or the other places?
• What if you moved to Europe? Or Taiwan? It’s an island nation. Can It even get there?
• What if one link in the chain is already dead? Would It skip it or come to a halt?

I have so many questions, David Robert Mitchell. I’m glad you answered none of them.