Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Deconstructing The Entity

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how David Robert Mitchell's It Follows stands out from its horror brethren through ingenious design and use of the entity. It explains Mitchell's preference to use a shape-shifting killing machine instead of the traditional masked murderer, which added another dimension of suspense to an already-horrifying concept. It also discusses how a standard slasher/stalker/serial killer is grounded by the fact that it's a human committing the murders since that individual suddenly cannot take flight or turn invisible. The chapter reviews the basic rules of Mitchell's entity in It Follows, which implies that the entity will follow people, it can look like anyone, it's slow but not dumb, and it can be rid of by sleeping with someone else. It emphasizes that the threat is only as effective as the rules surrounding an antagonist when introducing a new element.