Netflix Adds Horror Movie That Makes Viewers Lose Sleep, Suffer Wild Nightmares

For those wanting a truly scary movie-watching experience this Halloween season, Netflix has you covered. The streamer recently added It Follows, a 2014 movie that has had some viewers losing sleep and suffering from wild nightmares. In the film, teenager Jay (Maika Monroe) begins to be followed by terrifying phantoms after having sex with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary), for the first time. Her friends don’t believe that she is being stalked by Death, until their own sexual escapades lead them to be haunted as well.

Over the years, many horror fans have opened up about their experiences with the movie, revealing how much of an impact it left on them. “After I watched It Follows for the first time I had nightmares about people I knew following me for about a week and it ended with me experiencing sleep paralysis where a small child sized shadow man climbed up on my chest and started to suffocate me. It was terrifying,” one Reddit user shared. Another added, “It Follows has f—ed me up. I have had a couple nights where I dream about the movie, of seeing ‘the follower’ and waking up with my heart beating a bit harder. I don’t really get nightmares but the whole theme of the movie has had a more long lasting effect on me than any other movie ever has.”

In a past interview with Collider, It Follows writer-director David Robert Mitchell opened up about the movie and shared he first conceived the story when reflecting on a scary dream he had as a child. “I had the nightmare when I was like nine or ten or something, I always remembered pieces of that nightmare, the feeling from it. I’ve always wanted to make a horror film and so I always kept thinking about that nightmare. So, over the years, I’d just kind of add things to it.”

Mitchell went on to share, “In the nightmare it’s about being followed by something that looked like different people, all the things that are in the film, it was very slow, it’s not that hard to get away from it if you’re paying attention, but it’s the fact that it’s always coming for you. I just tried to kind of build on that feeling of dread and then at some point I started thinking, ‘Oh, it’d be fun if it’s something that can move between different people,’ almost like a game of tag to some degree.”

Finally, pointing out the sex-related dynamics in the story, Mitchell said, “And then it sort of became clear to me like, ‘Oh, it should be through sex because it would sort of connect the characters physically and emotionally.’ It just felt like the right thing. But that happened over a lot of years just sort of in the back of my brain.”