Line #34 Fridge/ItFollows


1	'''As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
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3	!!Fridge Brilliance:
4	* The circumstances of Jay's first sexual encounter with Hugh/Jeff are fairly rapey. They start out on a consensual date, they have sex, he drugs her, she has a traumatic experience, he drives her home and dumps her out of his car, and then she gives a statement to the police in tears. From that point onward she is haunted by that experience and what it means for her. Near the end of the film, it is heavily implied that she has sex with three random dudes on a boat in order to buy her some time before "it" comes for her. And ultimately she winds up with her childhood friend who turned out to be a pretty good guy and was willing to be with her in spite of being "damaged goods." The parents and police are barely present because in that situation there's really not much those people can do, and the people that do the most to support you are your closest friends.
5	* Why did "it" choose to look like Greg right before killing him? According to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w69bGC7RbVo this theory]] it takes the form of the person that the viewer is thinking, for example, Jay was thinking on Greg when she was seeing his house and then she sees It in Greg's form, other examples could be when she is seeing Yara swimming in the water, It has Yara's form (when It pulls her hair), Greg is thinking of his mom who is knocking and he sees his mom when he opens the door, etc. Of course the question is what is Jay thinking when it has the form of a stranger (like the old lady or the big guy or the rape victim) though it could be a more abstract explanation like if she is thinking in death or rape then she will see something associated with that.
6	* It can be very hard to pin down exactly when the movie is supposed to take place due to the choices in setting and costume design, best exemplified by the juxtaposition of a 1963 Cary Grant movie being a feature young adults are drawn to, and a compact, touchscreen, backlit e-reader more advanced than modern models. The strangeness of it can be quite jarring, until you consider the blurbs featured in the trailer, which paint it as a telling of an urban legend. Together they help create a story where a concrete setting in time doesn't matter; it is simultaneously 1963 and 2025, and any other time in which young adults and adolescents would tell these kind of stories, making it effectively timeless. This stylistic choice can also be seen in the ages of the main characters, which (for the most part) could vary in age from high school freshman to college senior, i.e. the ages at which these stories are told.
7	* There is a jump scare in Jeff/Hugh's rented home, when a peculiarly placed panel falls away, linking the bathroom to an adjacent room. It might appear a cliche, until you realise his rule about never entering a room with only one exit, and he likely created the crude window as an emergency escape.
8	* Jay and Paul are seen walking hand-in-hand at the end of the film, with Jay having passed it to Paul and Paul maybe-or-maybe-not giving it to a streetwalker. Are they just finding what happiness they can before their time runs out? Or, now that they can ''both'' see "It", are they ready to meet "It" as a full-fledged BattleCouple?
9	* For perceptive viewers, there actually Is a consistent visual tell as to if the thing following is It. Throughout the movie, if it isn't stark naked, It is always wearing white somewhere. The old woman's white hospital gown, Yara!It walking up behind Jay wearing a white cover-up, Greg's mom!It wearing a white night gown, and even the woman who urinates herself in Jay's kitchen is seen wearing a single white tube sock. Not that this would help altogether Too much, of course, given white is a fairly common clothing color.
10	** If one wonders why Jeff/Hugh never told Jay about this, it could be that he simply didn't ''know''. Word of God states he didnt tell Jay All the rules. Just the ones he knew of. It could simply be one of the rules or tells he wasn't privy, too. Or one he seemed unuseful given the aforementioned commonality of white clothing.
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12	!!FridgeHorror
13	* Assuming the creature has been around as long as humans have been having sex with each other and passing the curse along, how much worse would it have been to be a victim born in a century where convenient methods of transportation like bikes, cars, trains, and planes weren't available? A horse could be one option of keeping distance, but they can get tired. The reason Jay and her friends were able to plan and set up the trap at the pool was because of the amount of distance driven between their home (where it stood on the roof watching them go) and the pool (which presumably was dozens of miles away), and even then it only took it an entire day to make it there.
14	* The victim in the beginning of the movie ends up with her leg snapped backwards over her head. Later, we find out that "it" kills you through sex. Even worse, we find out it kills Greg while taking the form of his mother. Really adds an extra layer of horror to that last tearful phone call Anne gives to her dad, doesn't it?
15	* There is a scene where Jay heads to a beach and sees a boat off shore with three men in it. She takes off most of her clothing and starts to swim towards it. Does she have sex with one of the men to buy herself some time? Or with ''all three'' of them? Without even telling them what they are getting into? The fact that "it" starts coming after her again before long indicates that, if she did have sex with them, she didn't tell them about "it". See also: Paul's implied encounter with a pair of prostitutes.
16	** Additionally, the potential implication of Greg possibly sleeping with one or more girls he was chatting up while Jay was in the hospital. Greg seemed fairly nonchalant about It, whether through overconfidence or simply not believing in It's existence. And Greg claims to have not seen it in ''three days'' since contracting it from Jay. So either he slept with one or multiple girls without telling them about it, which bought him all those days where he didn't see It at all, or he was just ''extremely'' lucky. The latter of which is very unlikely.
17	* The above ties into an even bigger case of FridgeHorror: Jay is complicit in "it"'s murders. To stay alive, she has to doom others with her curse, and even then, that only buys her an unspecified amount of time before she has to go back and pass it on to somebody else. She has to become a killer in order to stay ahead of "it", as does Paul.
18	* The monster is not always walking. Sometimes it will stop to either stare down its prey (Jamie's kitchen), assess the situation (the pool), or navigate physical barriers (breaking windows and knocking on doors while standing still). It's also strong enough to blast a hole through the door, lift heavy electrical devices like TV's and fling them towards its target with near-perfect precision, climb over two-story roofs, and break a girl's leg over her head. Considering both these factors, the monster could probably run/sprint if it wanted to, but chooses not to because it knows it will catch up to its target eventually. This is compounded by the scene where "it" catches Greg: once in range, it does a very impressive lunge to pin him to the ground.
19	* If you think about it, the fact that if a person managed to pass "it" on to somebody else, it does not necessarily mean they are safe. Remember if a person "it" targets dies it goes right back to following it's previous target. That means a person may have passed it on, but they still have to worry about "it" killing the person ahead of them and coming back to kill them. It's terrifying enough to be chased by "it," but not knowing if "it" did succeed in killing its target and will be coming after you again is enough to terrify anyone. All of "its" targets will basically be looking over their shoulder all their lives not knowing if "it" will target them again.
20	* Hugh/Jeff claims to have picked up the curse from a one-night stand at a bar. Therefore, the fact that he was able to inform Jay of the rules of Its behavior (and that if she doesn't pass it on and it kills her, it will just come back to him) means he found it out via trial and error. So Jay was not the first girl he passed It on to.
21	** It's never stated he wasn't given a similar tutorial/introduction to his new situation, one night stand or not. If he was, he did not have to use trial and error, and it's entirely possible he was. It's highly likely that he was given at least a brief explanation. The whole idea of passing "it" along is to give yourself more time, so it would be in your best interest to make sure that whoever you pass it onto can evade "it" for as long as possible, or even pass it on again to extend the chain of victims away from yourself.
22	** Jeff isn't actually sure if he got it there or not meaning he had to learn from experience.
23	** If "It" has been keeping to the established rules, then the first girl killed in the movie may well be the person Hugh/Jeff had last passed it on to before Jay. It also stands to reason that he explained the rules to the first girl as well: she knows that other people can't see "it", and knows "it" can only walk, which is why she runs out of her house and buys time by waiting outside before going back for the car keys. If she had not been explained these rules, she would have been killed in her own home. It's highly likely that Hugh/Jeff explained the situation to the first girl like he did to Jay.
24	* When Hugh/Jeff is first explaining the nature of "It" to Jay, he mentions how he thinks it sometimes appears as someone its target loves [[ForTheEvulz just to hurt them]] (and indeed we later see that this is the case). "It" is also known to take the forms of the deceased, as seen when it pursues Jay away from the beach shed in the form of Annie (the girl "It" killed at the beginning of the movie). Putting these two factors together, what's to stop "It" from taking the form of someone's deceased loved one, purely to ''seriously'' mess with them before killing them (if it hasn't done so already)?
25	** That might be what "It" is doing in the final confrontation at the pool. Throughout the film Jay's mother is mentioned a few times but never her father. The only time we get any reference to Jay's father is when she looks at some family pictures and there's a brief shot of her father. "It" has taken on the form of Jay's father at the pool, and Jay is unwilling to tell her friends what "It" looks like. It's likely that her father is either absent or dead.
26	** When "It" first appears to Jay, it does so in a form reminiscent of her grandmother, wearing a hospital gown. It seems to be implying that Jay's grandmother is dead, and "It" wanted Jay to know the full horror of what was coming for her from word one.
27	** It could be that it isn't even solely something meant to frighten them before they die. The point could be to make a victim Hesitate. Imagine you finally decide to make your big stand against the thing, or even just think you're finally getting a moment of peace. Then you see a long deceased relative, and you ''hesitate''. You hesitate on fighting back or running for that one, crucial moment it needs so it can reach you. And by then, it's too late for you to escape.
28	* If a rapist somehow contracted It, imagine what horrors would come. Supposing that the rapist knows the rules (or not) they would continue to rape innocent people and pass It along. The victim gets doubly victimized (considering how It kills), and a possibly never-ending cycle of victimization goes on and on. (That said, it is worth nothing that the hypothetical serial rapist can still only pass It along to one future victim at a time.)
29	** Worse yet, this could actually be hugely beneficial to a rapist. If his victims didn't know the rules, none would survive long enough to testify, and the manner of their death would be hard to link back to the rapist.
30	** The movie never reveals whether It can be passed on only to a single person or to multiple people.
31	** Even more, if the theory is true that It also can turn into the form of previous victims, one of such victims is clearly a rape victim (the girl tied up, semi-naked, crying and urinating) so we know that at least one person already tried that.
32	** There's hope! WordOfGod says any sort of sexual act counts as long as ''both parties'' consider it to be sex. Many people don't consider rape to be sex, but rather an act of violence -- so if the victim falls into that school of thought, It stays with the rapist. [[LaserGuidedKarma Ah, karma.]]
33	** However, if the theory of rape does hold up, it gets a whole lot worse. What if raping more than one victim creates a branch, thus spawning more of "it", to chase down victims. Who's to say this isn't possible? Say, Serial Rapist A rapes Victims A, B, and C, and now It A chases Victim A until they find a new victim to extend the chain, while Victim B is chased until they find a new Victim B, and so on. In other words, instead of being a single victim, a serial rapist would end up branching them up to make the curse worse...
34	** WordOfGod says that there is only one It
35	* At more than one point in the movie, the teens drive through what appears to be a derelict neighborhood with one rundown, abandoned house after another. No one ever explains what happened to this neighborhood.
36	** It's shown that the movie takes place in Detroit
37	* Unless It came into existence recently, then either Its victims have been evading It for a long time by passing It along or simply running OR when It actually kills off the entire chain of victims back to the one that started the cycle, It selects a new victim by some other, unknown method and begins all over again.

Context Fridge / ItFollows