Director: David Robert Mitchell
Writer: David Robert Mitchell
Stars: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi
1 Hour, 40 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/31DbUEF
Synopsis
Annie runs out of the house, terrified. A few people ask if she’s OK, but she refuses their help. She runs down the street in her high heels, then she turns around and runs back into the house. She gets in her car and drives off, terrified. She drives off to the lake. The next morning her body is found, bent into a weird, oddly broken position.
Jay goes on a date with her boyfriend, Hugh, and later that night, they have sex in the back seat of his car. Afterwards, he knocks her out and ties her to a chair in an abandoned building. He explains cryptically, “This thing is going to follow you. Someone gave it to me, and I passed it on to you. It could look like someone you know, or it could be a stranger in a crowd. It’ll try to get close to you.” They look down and see a naked woman walking through the woods toward them. “If it kills you, it will come after me. Just pass it on to someone else as quickly as you can. Never go into a place with only one exit. It’s very slow, but it’s not dumb.” Then he drops her back off at home in the middle of the street.
Worst. Date. Ever.
She calls the police, and she goes to the hospital to get checked out. The next day in school, she starts seeing a strange old woman waking toward her slowly across the courtyard. No one else seems to see this old woman. Jay runs off. She tells her friends about what Hugh said, and they promise to help. They all have a sleepover. The window in the kitchen breaks, and her friend goes to check it out. While he’s gone, Jay sees the creepy woman again. When her friends intervene, she sees a super tall, creepy man walking behind them that none of them can see.
They track down Hugh’s abandoned house, and find noisemaking traps inside all the windows and doors. They find a photo that leads them to Hugh’s high school– someone there might know his real name. His real name turns out to be Jeff. Jeff explains everything to the group. She needs to pass it on, or it will kill her and come back to him.
They all go stay at Greg’s isolated beach house, and the Greg gives Jay a gun. The walker attacks Jay, but no one else sees anything. It’s invisible but not insubstantial, so Jay shoots it repeatedly. The tall man appears and beats on the door. Jay runs out the back, steals Greg’s car, and promptly crashes. She wakes up in the hospital with a broken arm in a cast.
She has sex with Greg that night in the hospital. Three days pass, and he doesn’t see anything following him. Jay is hiding out, afraid to go out or do anything. The friends start to wonder if she made up or imagined the whole thing since nothing has happened to Greg.
She watches someone who looks like Greg break into his own house, turn into Greg’s mother, and kill the real Greg. It then starts back after Jay. She has sex with some guys on a boat and returns home. Her longtime friend, Paul, wants to have sex and take it away from her, but she doesn’t want to hurt him.
Paul comes up with a plan to kill it. They all go to the Detroit Swimming Pool and plug in all their electrical appliances. Jay gets in the water as bait. They wait. And wait. It shows up and kicks one appliance after another into the water, nearly electrocuting Jay. Jay’s sister throws a sheet over it, and Paul shoots it in the head, twice. The whole pool turns red with its blood. It must be dead, right?
Later Paul gets his reward, sex with Jay. They walk hand-in-hand down the street the next day with a strange man walking behind them who may or may not actually be following.
Commentary
The plan with the swimming pool was pretty stupid and doomed to fail. They got lucky. Jay goes swimming with her arm in a cast not once, but twice. I want to know what that thing’s made of.
The concept is pretty good, something like an STD from Hell. Or maybe it’s just another case of “If you have underage sex, you’ll die.” It looks good as well; Some of the cinematography feels like a YouTube short or student film, but in a good way. Most of it is shot with a really wide-field lens, making everything look really big.
Although the whole thing with the creature is never really explained, it’s surprisingly creepy. The rules, as set down here, are not easy to beat. If the person on the end of the chain dies, the monster moves on up the ladder to the previous person. You are never really guaranteed safety again. You can find someone to have sex with, but if they don’t understand and follow the rules, it’s only going to kill them and start coming after you again. If you don’t tell the next person the rules, they aren’t going to last long.