PR in the Philippines

(SeaPRwire) –   Forgive the play on words, but the concept of an It Follows sequel has been trailing Maika Monroe for quite some time. Filmed in Detroit’s suburbs, with a rising director behind the lens and an emerging star in front, the film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. By the time it reached theaters nine months later, it had already become a cult favorite, part of a fresh and thrilling wave of independent horror films (see also: The Babadook, The Witch) that was redefining the genre back then. Critics adored it, and fans engaged in endless debates on Reddit, dissecting the details of how the film’s shape-shifting “It” — an inescapable evil transmitted between people via sexual contact — functioned.

Monroe leveraged that experience into roles in both major (she co-starred in 2016’s Independence Day: Resurgence) and smaller films, reestablishing her “scream queen” title as the lead of Longlegs in 2024. Mitchell has been less active, releasing just one feature film, the polarizing Under the Silver Lake (2018), since then. (To be fair, he has another project, The End of Oak Street, set for an August release.) Throughout this period, interviewers have repeatedly posed the same question to the pair: When will they create a sequel to the film that launched both of their careers?

At last, in 2023, the pair had a concrete answer: A sequel titled They Follow was in development via NEON, with filming set for summer 2024. The distributor even hinted at a foreboding title card for the film, simply stating it was “coming soon.”

Two years on, “soon” has passed. Yet at a Q&A during this year’s SXSW, Monroe casually revealed that They Follow is set to film this summer: “I made this small film called It Follows early in my career,” she stated. “We’re shooting the sequel this summer.” She added, “Reading the script and discovering what this character—who’s been so significant to me and transformed my life in countless ways—has been up to over the last decade has been really cool.”

Monroe also confirmed this on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, noting that They Follow is “the next project” on her schedule. “It’s quite dark,” she added. “We’re definitely pushing the limits here. Even when reading the script, you get that same nostalgic vibe” — It Follows is set in an ambiguous era, merging 1970s and 1980s aesthetics with futuristic elements like the iconic clamshell e-reader — “the slow camera work, all of it. I think it might be great,” she said with a chuckle.

This marks the first time Monroe has revisited a character from a prior film, and Mitchell’s first time writing and directing a sequel to one of his own works. Details about the film’s plot remain scarce, though Monroe told Entertainment Weekly back in February that “It’s not at all what I anticipated where you’d find [her original character, Jay Height], which I found really intriguing … I know this might sound cliché, but it’s staying true to the original by reuniting the same team… The story is still very much within that universe, just on a larger scale.”

As long as Mitchell brings his knack for striking compositions and unsettling imagery, and Monroe brings the courage and resolve that make her horror characters so unforgettable, it follows (apologies for the pun) that all should go smoothly.