Before we begin, I just want to note that this isn’t going to be an actual review of It Follows (I will do a traditional review at a later date), and it will have many spoilers, so I am assuming that if you are reading this, then you have hopefully seen the film. This is more of an analysis of one particular aspect of the film, but I’ll get into that later in this article.

It Follows is a 2015 film (technically it premiered at Cannes in 2014, but it didn’t get a wide theatrical release until March 2015), written and directed by David Robert Mitchell and stars Maika Monroe as Jay, a 19 year old university student who, after sleeping with boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary) is pursued by a supernatural entity that is trying to kill her.

This is one of those unique films that pops up very rarely in today’s cinematic environment, that just hits all the right notes and achieves exactly what it sets out to do. From the very first time I saw this film, I knew I it was a unique experience.

Now, while most reviews and essays about It Follows have focused entirely on people’s differing interpretations of what “It” actually is and what it represents, as well as their own exploration of the various themes of the film, I would like to discuss one specific aspect of the film that stuck out to me, and that is the idea of isolation.

The other aspect of the film that stands out is its creepy, dream-like atmosphere. This is enhanced due to the strange look of the clothing and set design. The clothes are a mix of seventies and eighties styles, and apart from the very beginning of the the film, there are no mobile phones used. Jay uses an old corded land-line phone to call her neighbour at one point in the film.

The cars are all from the seventies. The large T.V. set in Jay’s lounge room is broken, and it’s an old CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) set, probably from the eighties. On top of the large T.V set is a smaller T.V that is showing an old black and white movie from the fifties, but Yara is using a digital e-reader.

The other aspect of the film that lends it a creepy and dream-like feeling is the surrounding suburbs of where Jay lives. It is a ruined wasteland of dilapidated buildings, almost completely devoid of people.

Dreams are another thing that we must necessarily experience in isolation as no one else can dream our dreams for us.

However, before I get too far into my thoughts on the film (too late?), I suppose I should briefly give my own interpretation of what I think “It” represents.

Most people say that “It” is a representation of an STD/STI, due to the fact that it is transmitted from one person to another via a good old fashioned shagging. While I feel that this may be a reasonable interpretation, I see “It” more as a representation of death itself (but I suppose you could argue that some STD’s such as syphilis etc…, if not treated, can ultimately lead to death).

At the end of the film, Jay’s friend Yara reads out an excerpt from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, which may point towards “It” as representing death:

“But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all, but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now, this very instant, your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man, and that this is certain, certain! That’s the point, the certainty of it.”

The director himself had this to say about the nature of sex and death:

“We’re all here for a limited amount of time and we can’t escape our mortality… but love and sex are two ways in which we can at least temporarily push death away.”

However, because It Follows is a work of art, and art can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways, it’s impossible to have a definitive answer, as each person will have their own interpretation, not only of what “It” represents, but of the film as a whole.

Death is something that we will all experience at some point in our lives, and we will ultimately experience it alone or in isolation, even if we have friends or family around us when it happens, as they cannot experience it on our behalf. It is thus in isolation, that we must take that leap into the great unknown.

Our own mortality is something that we really only start to come to terms with in adulthood, as we take on greater responsibilities and face the harshness of the “real world”.

Jay and her friends are just starting to make the transition from their teenage years into the harsh world of adulthood, and are yet to fully realise who they are and where they fit in the grand scheme of things.

At the beginning of the film, Jay is seen floating in the backyard pool by herself (or in isolation), even though two kids from next door try to peep at her from behind the fence, and her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe) comes out of the house to let her know that her friends have arrived. It is Jay in isolation, who experiences floating in the pool and looks up into the sky, daydreaming.

The pool seems to be a place of security and safety, as it is probably a reminder of her childhood. However about two thirds into the film, the pool is seen again, but this time in a state of disrepair, it is half empty, and the wall of the pool is caved in. This may represent the destruction of childhood and false sense of security that we have in certain places when we are children, and a gradual move towards adulthood, where there is no security and where we have to stand up for ourselves, or be trampled on by others.

The safety of the pool (we could say that Jay is a large fish in a small pond of childhood) stands in contrast to the ocean, when she is at the beach house later in the film. The ocean is a place of danger as it is here that she encounters “It”, and it is by the ocean that she sees three guys on a boat, where she swims across to them in order to transmit “It”. The public swimming pool is also a place of danger, as it is here that she encounters “It” again, at the end of the film (both the ocean and the large public swimming pool make her a small fish in a very large pond of adulthood).

Jay seems to have sphere of isolation around her the entire film. Even when she is with friends, she somehow seems separated from them. Her friends are always in a group together, often playing cards, watching Jay deal with her situation, not really able to help her. This is very much like life itself. Other people really can’t live our lives for us, we have to experience all the ups and downs for ourselves.

In fact, throughout the entire film, Jay is constantly in a state of isolation, even when her friends are nearby. After Jay has slept with Hugh in the back of his car, Hugh gets out and walks to the rear of the car, leaving Jay in a state of isolation, laying on the back seat and talking about her childhood dreams of being old enough to ride around in cars with guys. She makes an interesting observation, saying that now that she is old enough to do what she has dreamt of for so long, she wonders aloud to herself “where the hell would we go?”

After her first encounter with “It” while in the wheelchair, Jay agrees that her friend Paul can stay at her place for the night, on the couch to keep watch. Jay comes in to the living room and sits with Paul and they talk about their childhood while watching an old black and white movie from the fifties. Then suddenly we hear the sound of broken glass. Paul goes into the kitchen to investigate, but says that apart from the window being broken, there’s nothing out there. He then says that he is going upstairs to tell Kelly. This leaves Jay in a state of isolation again, where she then comes face to face with “It” for the first time since the wheelchair incident.

She the sees “It” again while she is in class, looking out the window. While there are other people in the class (including her neighbour Greg played by Daniel Zovatto) she is sitting at the back, in isolation from them. She then runs out of the classroom and into the hallway where there are two girls talking to each other. They can’t see “It” and so Jay has to deal with the situation in isolation from other people once again.

Later in the film, Jay is laying in a hospital bed, even though her friends and family are with her, they are all asleep, leaving her once again in a state of isolation. She then hears footsteps in the hallway getting ever closer, and she starts to panic, thinking that “It” has caught up with her, and there is nowhere for her to go to escape. However, it turns out to merely be a hospital nurse.

These are just a few examples of Jay being in a state of isolation. This is a running theme throughout the entire film, and to me, this represents Jay as she starts to enter the adult world, realising that death is inevitable, and that she needs to comes to terms with it on her own, so she can then move on into the world a fully realised adult.

At the end of the film, Jay and her friends try to lure “It” into the public swimming pool with a frankly ridiculous scheme (which the director stated was intentional, as the film is a dream-like environment and so the solutions that Jay and her friends come up with are also dream-like i.e. they deliberately make no sense). Jay swims into the middle of the pool and her friends all stand around the outside edge, laying traps and waiting for “It” to show up. Even here Jay is separated from her friends, or is placed in a state of isolation.

While the scheme manages to delay “It” for a while, they don’t seem to have killed “It” outright, as by the last scene of the film, Jay and Paul are walking down the street, near Jay’s house and we can see in the background behind them, a figure wearing a white shirt, walking slowly towards them (the figure is also wearing a dark coloured jacket, but all previous versions of “It” have been completely dressed in white, or were wearing nothing at all). The figure is out of focus and it is unclear whether this is actually ”It” or just a regular person. Death comes for us all in the end.

At the end of the day, we all experience the world in a state of isolation, and we must face the fact that death is not only inevitable, but it is a part of life. It is only when we realise that life is finite, that we can experience true moments of happiness and fully appreciate the more joyful aspects of the world.