Director David Robert Mitchell and actress Maika Monroe are reuniting on “They Follow,” a sequel to the 2014 cult horror film, “It Follows.” Hey, I was as surprised as you were when the news dropped earlier in the year. Nobody expected this sequel.
Neon is set to co-produce the film, with principal photography potentially happening later this year. Mitchell’s film is one of the many original horror films that have recently been greenlit for a sequel, the others include “Talk to Me,” “The Black Phone,” “Smile,” and “A Quiet Place.”
Monroe is now teasing the sequel by telling Collider’s Perri Nemiroff that we will “100% get something new with the next chapter.” Monroe adds that she’s read the script for “They Follow”, and that audiences should expect a “bigger and darker and more fucked up” sequel.
But as you know with the first film, I'm not taking any credit in this, David is brilliant. I mean, he is brilliant. The whole movie transformed at that point. It was changing the game in the genre, and he wouldn't ever make a sequel if he didn't think it was going to top it . He's very specific, turns down so many… He just knows what he wants to do and what he wants to make. I mean, at first I'm like, “Oh, a sequel? Where are we going to go here?” And I read it, and it's just so fucking good. It's so good. I'm so excited. I think where you'll meet Jay at this point is maybe not what's expected, but it's so cool. It's just, of course, as everyone says for sequels, literally, though, is just bigger and darker and more fucked up . Reading it was the craziest thing ever.
The one thing that has me semi-hopeful about “They Follow” is the filmmaker behind it. Mitchell is a rule-breaker, and his concisely subtle work on “It Follows” was pretty incredible. He recently completed production on his mysterious ‘80s-set Dinosaur movie, starring Anne Hathaway and Oscar Isaac, which is set for a summer 2025 release.
The minimalist and sexual “It Follows” is one of the best horror movies of the last ten years. The film refused to adhere to the usual conventions of 21st-century horror. Mitchell delivered a stunningly authoritative film — a blend of the surreal with the very real. Every scene in this film was filled with unbearable dread, bringing to mind early John Carpenter. Scene after scene, the viewer was engulfed in an inescapable nightmare.
In “It Follows,” Monroe plays 19 year-old who loses her virginity and is later told by the same guy that he has passed on a curse to her that will follow and haunt her everywhere she goes, the film is imprinted with these clever undertones. The only way for our main protagonist to get rid of this “disease” she has inherited is to sleep with someone else and pass it on to them.
In the next decade, a slew of film school term papers soon followed, much about the film’s allegorical connection to STDs. Those sly open-minded students wouldn’t be far off in their theories, but there was much more to “It Follows” than just its fascinating dissection of STD allegories and teenage sexuality.
Mitchell’s last film was 2018’s “Under the Silver Lake,” an unfairly maligned effort which premiered at Cannes to mixed responses. However, a passionate cult following has built up for that film, with even the creation of a popular subreddit whose members are still trying to figure out the film’s mysteries, more than five years since its release. ‘Silver Lake’ was a fascinating exercise in atmosphere and tension. Mitchell is one of the few directors out there who can capture what dreams really feel like.