It Follows is a 2014 horror movie about a sexually transmitted monster who stalks someone until it either kills them or that person passes it on to someone else. It was really creepy and after I saw it in the theater I was very nervous walking home, especially if someone was walking in my direction. Anyone on the street could be It. ANYONE.
Anyway, Screencrush now reports that director David Robert Mitchell and star Maika Monroe will return for a follow-up: They Follow. Oh great, It has a family.
Screencrush also has a description from Mitchell about the origins of the story which sums things up nicely:
"The basic idea came from a recurring nightmare that I had when I was a kid. When I was like, nine or 10, I was being followed by this monster and it looked like different people, and it would just walk very slowly toward me. I could see that other people didn’t seem to react to it, and it would just follow me into my house and my family wouldn’t see it. I would have to run, climb out a window and run down an alley. It wasn’t that hard to get away from it, but you know, it was the feeling of anxiety that it’s always walking toward me. I stopped having that when I was young—the dream—but I remembered it. Over the years I kept thinking it would be fun to try and make a horror film, and I kept thinking about that idea, and started adding little pieces to it over the years. Eventually I added the sexual element, of course. It happened over a long period of time, and I don’t remember every little piece of it, but yeah, I wrote it a few years ago. That’s when I put everything down on paper and collected all these little fragments of ideas."
They Follow is expected to start shooting in 2024.
Amazon MGM Studios is making a Poltergeist TV show
Speaking of horror franchises, Variety reports that Amazon MGM Studios is making a TV show “set within the world of” the Poltergeist movies. Those would be the 1980s-era movie about a family who moves into a suburban home only to be haunted by telekinetic ghosts. Remember the bit with the little girl and the TV? And the toys getting possessed? And how you shouldn’t move gravestones but not the bodies? It’s all pretty good.
Is it a little dispiriting that Hollywood keeps rebooting old properties rather than creating new ones? Maybe, but it’s nothing new, especially in horror. Also, I completely forgot that there was already a Poltergeist reboot movie in 2015. Hopefully the TV show goes over better, whenever it comes out. We’re also not sure if the show would stream on Amazon Prime Video, MGM+, or what.
Five Nights at Freddy’s kills at the box office
Finally, in modern horror movies, Five Nights at Freddy’s opened this past weekend. Based on the video game series, it’s about a security guard (The Hunger Games veteran Josh Hutcherson) who becomes a night guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a Chuck E. Cheese-like family restaurant with big animatronic animals that, naturally, come to life. Then things get weird.
According to Deadline, the movie made some $80 million at the domestic box office and around $132 million worldwide. That’s all in its first weekend, which makes it a monster hit. It’s the biggest horror opening of the year to date, ahead of The Nun II. On a budget of $20 million, that is a very good haul.
Happy Halloween, the horror genre.
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h/t The A.V. Club