FILM · 2014 · USA
It Follows
24 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
24 Interesting Facts About It Follows
Interesting Facts (19)
- #001
(At about 9 minutes) The cinema at the start of the film is the Redford Theatre, a historic Japanese-style movie palace in Detroit, MI's Old Redford neighborhood, with a fully working Wurlitzer organ. The Evil Dead (1981) premiered there.
- #002
The set dressing keeps you from pinning down the year, and the costumes keep you from pinning down the season: over the film's short running time, people wear coats, jackets, T-shirts and swimsuits by day and next to nothing at night, all outdoors and apparently comfortable.
- #003
(At about 21 minutes) The first form of "It" that Jay sees while strapped to the wheelchair is Hugh/Jeff's mother.
- #004
(At about 46 minutes) The rundown house where Hugh hides and where Jay and her friends find him is an American Foursquare, a style popular from the 1890s to the 1930s. Many Foursquare layouts have "circular" routes that let you walk through several rooms and end up back where you started without retracing your steps, say kitchen, hall, living room, dining room and back to the kitchen, and in some houses neighboring bedrooms share closets and bathrooms. That kind of "flowing" plan would make the house especially handy when you need to escape "It."
- #005
Director David Robert Mitchell said neither a condom nor gay sex stops the monster; the curse is passed on either way.
- #006
We never clearly see the face of Jay and Kelly's mother. In her first scene she is on the phone in the kitchen with her hair covering her face, and in every other scene her face is out of focus or partly cut off by the frame.
- #007
In the background of some crowd scenes, people are slowly walking toward Jay and her friends, to make the audience uneasy that any one of them could be the Entity.
- #008
The film was shot mostly with wide-angle lenses to make it feel more expansive and frightening.
- #009
Several trailer shots of the naked It/The Entity had to be redone, with it wearing underwear instead; most noticeably, in the shot of The Entity standing on the roof of Jay's family's house, it is wearing shorts.
- #010
In the showdown at the abandoned public pool, Kelly keeps asking Jay what form The Entity has taken, since only Jay can see it. Jay won't say, because it has taken the form of their father; she doesn't want to hurt her sister by telling her the Entity is using their dead father's shape to get at her.
- #011
Disasterpeace scored the film because director David Robert Mitchell was a huge fan of the video game Fez (2012), which Disasterpeace had composed.
- #012
At around 21 minutes, explaining "It" to Jay, Hugh says, "It's very slow, but it's not dumb." The gang's plan to kill "It" depends on it blindly walking into the pool after Jay and ignoring the electrical appliances set up around the edge. It isn't fooled for a second and starts hurling the appliances into the water at her.
- #013
Jay is short for Jamie, a tribute to scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jay has a sister named Kelly, just as Jamie Lee Curtis has a sister, Kelly Curtis.
- #014
Director David Robert Mitchell said in an interview that the "monster" could, in principle, board a plane to follow its victim.
- #015
Fans have argued at length over whether Jay sleeps with the three men on the boat. Some think she does and buys herself a little more time; others think she doesn't, since the Entity easily catches up with her later at the abandoned pool. In keeping with the film's ambiguity, the scene is never explained.
- #016
"It" can be seen following Jay in the school scene, though she never notices.
- #017
At around 10 minutes, playing "trade," Jeff/Hugh picks a toddler he'd like to swap places with and explains that he wants to "start fresh," which makes sense, since he is about to pass "It" on to her.
- #018
The eagerly awaited sequel to 'It Follows', titled 'They Follow', has officially passed a significant milestone. Maika Monroe returns in the lead role.
- #019
According to the source, the sequel has taken a major step forward as a long-anticipated project. The film's title was announced as 'They Follow', and Maika Monroe's presence in the cast was confirmed.
Easter Eggs & References (1)
- #020
Red or pink hints that It is about to appear, showing up in the background or on someone's clothes when it attacks.
Deeper Meaning (4)
- #021
The idea came from a recurring nightmare the director had, in which a predator kept slowly walking toward him.
- #022
The film's era is deliberately left vague so it feels like a dream. Some cars are fairly recent, while many seem to date from the '60s to the late '80s, and the characters watch movies on old CRT televisions. Yara has a device that looks like a clamshell compact but reads it like an e-reader and at one point uses it as a light, and the girl at the start of the film has a cell phone and drives a modern car, with plenty of modern vehicles around.
- #023
Talking to Vulture, director David Robert Mitchell explained the logic of the group's seemingly hopeless plan to trap the creature in the final showdown: they are just kids trying to beat the threat on their own terms. "It's the dumbest plan ever! [Laughs] It's a kid-movie plan, something Scooby-Doo and the gang would come up with, and that's an important point. What would you do if you were faced with a monster and found yourself trapped in a nightmare? Ultimately, you have to resort to a route available to you in the physical world to fight it, and that's not really going to cut it." He added: "We kind of avoided every kind of conventional plotting for that scene, because in more conventional horror films there might be a clue that would lead them to find a way to destroy this monster. I deliberately avoided putting those in. Instead, they do their best to achieve something and we witness it fail. That's probably a very unusual way to approach the confrontation in the third act, but we thought it was a fun way to deal with it."
- #024
(At about 8 minutes) Early on, as Jay looks in the mirror getting ready for her date with Hugh, two photos are tucked into the mirror: one of Jay in a swimming pool and one of her with her father. At the end, "It" takes her father's form and attacks her in a swimming pool, and we see him in a photograph again near the end.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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