The Entity (It Follows)

The Entity, or It, is the name given to the otherwise unnamed main antagonist in the 2014 film It Follows. It is a supernatural being that pursues victims of its curse at a walking pace.

Description
Little is known about the creature or where it came from, but it is the result of a curse that was created through unknown means. A person who possesses the curse will be stalked endlessly by the entity until it kills him or her. The curse can be passed onto someone else by having sexual intercourse with the person, but if that individual is killed, the entity will revert back to stalking the previous target of the curse. The entity will always follow the latest victim to the curse and work its way backwards through the chain of victims in consecutive order. Only those who have been affected by the curse can see the entity even after having passed the curse on to a new victim.

For reasons strictly unknown, the Entity constantly changes its form in spite of its tightly limited audience. The process of this change has never been seen, but the Entity will have assumed a new form by virtually every occasion it is observed by at least one cursed individual after having evaded everyone's sight even if only briefly. It can look like any human being including known existing associates of the cursed. Any features can be changed including size, weight, and fashion. Although it obviously isn't actually human, the Entity is capable of simulating any natural function of the human body including urination.

A girl carrying a soccer ball walking towards a group of people including Jay Height and Jeff Redmond, both bearing the curse, is initially suspected by Jeff to be the entity until Jay's friends confirm that they can see the girl as she walks past the group.

Throughout the film there are a number of other occasions where someone is seen walking in what happens to be in the general direction of the cursed. It is implied that the entity is following nearby, but ultimately remained ambiguous. When Jay and her friends were investigating the last known residence of Hugh, the previous link in the curse chain, a couple of different people, each at different times, are seen sneaking towards them. The entity may have appeared as a girl in a white jacket at Jeff's high school while Jay was there to inspect a yearbook to discover Jeff Redmond was Hugh's real name. Finally a figure is seen following the last two known links in the curse chain. In this case it is uncertain, not only if this person is the entity, also if the curse has been passed on to anyone new, or even if the entity is still alive.

Presumably, the entity itself cannot be killed. However if it were to be wounded, it may stop for a moment, only to continue pursuing its victim.

Biography
The entity's earliest known victim was Jeff Redmond, who claimed he received the curse from a girl he met in a bar. Another victim of the curse was a girl named Annie, although it is unclear if Jeff was directly responsible for her becoming a target of the entity. Annie would be ultimately killed by the entity on a beach after she gave up running from it.

It is unclear if Jeff received the curse before or after Annie. Nonetheless the entity pursued Jeff shortly after claiming Annie's life, at one point appearing as a girl in a yellow dress to him in a movie theater. To escape the creature, Jeff (under the name of Hugh) had sex with Jay Height, a girl he began dating. He then informed Jay about the curse, forcing her to look at the entity while it was in the form of a naked young woman to prove its threat was real.

Now with a new target, the entity took the form of an elderly woman and chased Jay out of her school. Although reluctant to believe in the monster, this encounter caused Jay to seek the aid of her friends Paul and Yara and her sister Kelly, who all agreed to sleep over at the same house. That night, the entity broke into the house as a topless and bloodied girl wetting herself and re-appeared as a tall man with dark eyes after Jay hid herself in a bedroom. Now truly terrified by what she was facing, Jay evaded it by fleeing to a nearby park.

Eventually, the entity reached Jay at a beachfront property owned by Greg, Jay's neighbor who joined her friends in helping her. Assuming the form of Yara, it grabbed Jay by her hair, but released her after Paul struck her with a chair. Effortlessly knocking Paul aside, it followed Jay as she ran to a boathouse for safety. Although Jay managed to shoot it, the entity continued to come after her. She then attempted to barricade herself in the boathouse, only for the entity to bust a hole though the bottom of the door. Panicking, Jay drove off in Greg's car and wound up crashing into a cornfield, breaking her arm in the process.

As Jay recovered in a hospital, she decided to have sex with Greg, making him the next target of the entity. After three days passed without Greg seeing anything out of the ordinary, the entity caught up to him and broke into his house. Despite Jay's efforts to save him, the entity tricked Greg into opening his bedroom door and seemingly raped him to death while in the form of his mother.

Running out of options, Paul and the group came up with a plan to destroy the entity for good. They decided to lure the creature to an indoor pool, where Jay would remain in the water. When it went into the pool to pursue her, they would electrocute it by tossing electrical objects in the water. During this time, the entity might have hunted down and killed a young man on a boat that Jay approached. Since it is unknown if Jay had sex with the man, it cannot be determined for certain if he became targeted by the entity. Regardless, the entity was still hunting Jay when the plan was set into motion as it appeared to her as a naked old man on her roof.

By the time the entity finally arrived at the pool in the form of Jay's father, it did not fall for her trap. Instead, it attempted to kill Jay by throwing the objects at her. Paul attempted to shoot it, but since the entity was only visible to those afflicted with its curse, he had great difficulty hitting it. Upon finally shooting it, the entity fell into the pool, and continued to come after Jay. It managed to grab Jay by her foot and held her underwater until Paul shot it again. When Jay looked into the water to see if it was destroyed, she saw a cloud of blood and no body.

The ultimate fate of the entity is unknown. Although seemingly defeated, a figure later appeared to be following Jay and Paul while they held hands. If still active, it is also unclear who its current target is; Paul had sex with Jay after the struggle at the pool, but he later encountered prostitutes who took an interest in him.

Personality
The entity appears to be mindless at first, taking no course of action remotely derivative of walking at casual pace in a straight path to whomever is next on its list and murder them one by one in order. However throughout the course of the film it is revealed through its actions to posses a sense of cruelty, a sinister demeanor, and perhaps even the capacity for higher reasoning.

When Jeff introduced the concept of the entity to Jay, he claimed that the reason it would occasionally appear as someone its victim loves is probably to hurt them. Jeff claimed that it could look like anyone that "...helps to get close to you", though not all of its various choices in forms would be considered an ideal disguise. Some forms would be partially or fully nude, one form a tall and conspicuous man with menacing eyes, and on one occasion it would even urinate while pursuing Jay within her house. When it caught up to Jay at the beach it chose to look like Yara, someone who was already in Jay's presence, with a different attire from that which the original was wearing at the time. Although it does not chase or kill anyone who does not bear the curse it has defended itself from Paul by pushing him away, thus confirming its existence to a few people who could not see it. Aside from insisting on remaining invisible to anyone who isn't linked to the chain of its curse the entity's actions suggest that it has little to no regard as to whether or not anyone, cursed or not, can tell that it exists or even that it isn't human. It does not deliberately draw attention to itself, but the entity's selective visibility and cosmetic transformation ability appear to serve only one purpose: not to blend in but rather to taunt its victims.

It has never spoken a word, however it has screeched and screamed while appearing as a young boy. It is almost always walking toward its target with a few exceptions where it will stand still and stare. On one occasion Jay had noticed the entity standing on top of her roof posed as a fully nude old man. When Jay tried to warn Greg that the entity was after him, it briefly paused from knocking on his door and glanced at her, only to resume knocking almost immediately. This was the only known occasion where it would look at anyone other than the current target on its list.

The Entity has no fear of confrontation as it almost instantly recovers from injuries (including a number of gunshots to the head). However it has occasionally thrown blunt objects as weapons, such as a brick to get through a house window or even some of the electrical appliances that Jay's friends had set around the pool in which they had attempted to trap it. It is unclear if it has been killed or even if it is mortal, but it stood at the edge of the swimming pool momentarily as if contemplating the proper course of action and refused to purposely dive into the water. Instead it would resort to hurling projectiles, maintaining a safe distance.

Only two of its victims have been seen deceased: Annie and Greg. Annie's death is not displayed to the audience, however her body is seen desecrated, with her leg snapped backwards by the knee and left hanging up over her torso. Jay witnesses the Entity caress Greg in a sexual fashion while taking on the appearance of his mother as he takes his final breath. Its attempts to kill Jay have not always been intended to be quick in any sense. The first time it had caught up to Jay it had grabbed her by the hair and lifted it up from behind her.

Sometimes it will take a path toward its target which respects the guidelines of modern civilization rather than in a straight line like a compass pointing to the North Pole (i.e. Jay witnessed it approaching Greg's house via the sidewalk on their neighborhood and trying the door). This suggests that it functions like a conscious being with awareness of self, environment, etc. rather than a machine programmed to carry out a single specific purpose.

Overall its intentions seem to be not only to kill anyone in the chain from last to first, but to fill their final moments with terror and other means of psychological torture. It's quite possible that it walks at a slow pace deliberately for the purpose of making its victims anxious with anticipation. It also likes to take its time to kill them, opting the "slow and painful" route.