The climax of David Robert Mitchell’s *It Follows* (2014) takes place at a public indoor swimming pool, where protagonist Jay Heagy finally confronts the shape-shifting entity that has been hunting her. The scene resolves the film’s central conflict not through traditional victory but through ambiguous survival—Jay and her friends attempt to electrocute the creature in the pool’s water, but the ending deliberately leaves viewers uncertain whether they’ve truly defeated it or merely delayed the inevitable. The climax encapsulates the film’s core theme: that some threats cannot be entirely vanquished, only temporarily survived.
Jay stands at the pool’s edge as the entity—manifesting as her deceased father in decomposed form—approaches through the water. Her friends have pooled their money and laid a trap involving a live power cord. When the entity enters the water, the electricity courses through it, and for a moment, the threat appears eliminated. But the film’s final scene suggests otherwise: Jay and her boyfriend Paul sit together on a porch, and the camera pans to a distant figure walking toward them, leaving audiences to wonder whether the curse has simply passed to someone else or if the entity remains in pursuit.
Table of Contents
- What Happens During the Pool Scene—And Why It Matters
- The Ambiguity of the Ending and What It Reveals About the Film’s Thesis
- Visual Composition and the Creature’s Manifestations
- Why the Apparent Victory Doesn’t Resolve the Central Conflict
- The Interpretation Question—Has the Entity Been Destroyed or Merely Delayed?
- How the Pool Scene Compares to Other Supernatural Entity Confrontations in Horror
- The Curse’s Nature and Why Traditional Victory Is Impossible
What Happens During the Pool Scene—And Why It Matters
The pool sequence is deliberately understated compared to the film’s marketing and cultural expectations. Rather than a climactic battle or supernatural showdown, the scene is almost pedestrian: friends execute a basic electrocution plan against a creature that, for most of the film, has never been shown to possess any visible weakness. The entity appears human-like at this moment, wearing the form of Jay’s father, which adds psychological weight—she’s forced to see a figure of paternal protection as a monstrous threat. This casting choice mirrors the film’s overall unease: the familiar becomes uncanny, and safety figures become sources of dread. The power cord trap succeeds momentarily.
The entity convulses in the water, and the group believes they’ve succeeded. But the film never confirms the creature’s death—no body, no closure. This refusal to provide definitive victory is central to Mitchell’s vision. The entity in *It Follows* operates on dream logic and inevitability; it cannot truly be killed because it represents an unstoppable force of mortality and consequence. Comparing this to traditional horror films reveals the difference: in *Friday the 13th*, Jason can be drowned or decapitated, providing temporary relief. In *It Follows*, drowning the entity changes nothing.
The Ambiguity of the Ending and What It Reveals About the Film’s Thesis
The film’s final moments introduce a crucial ambiguity that many viewers miss: a figure in the distance walking toward Jay and Paul’s house. It’s impossible to determine whether this is the entity again, a random pedestrian, or the result of the curse passing to Paul. This ambiguity is not a storytelling flaw—it’s the film’s entire point. Mitchell explicitly designed the ending to deny closure and force viewers to sit with uncomfortable uncertainty. The original curse passes through sexual contact, making Jay the temporary host until she passes it to someone else.
By the end of the film, she has presumably given it to Paul, who accepted the risk knowingly. But if the distant figure is the entity, then either Paul has already been killed and the creature is coming for Jay again, or the killing attempt failed entirely. This impossibility of resolution mirrors real-world anxieties: once you understand that death is coming for everyone, no amount of clever planning makes you safe. The pool scene’s apparent victory is psychological relief, not genuine safety. A limit to this interpretation exists: some viewers argue the figure is merely establishing post-climax normalcy, yet the film’s visual language and Mitchell’s interviews suggest intentional ambiguity was the goal.
Visual Composition and the Creature’s Manifestations
Mitchell uses visual grammar throughout *It Follows* to communicate the entity’s nature, and the climax is no exception. The creature appears as Jay’s father—a specific choice that grounds the abstract threat in personal loss. Jay’s father died when she was young, making his form particularly unsettling. The creature doesn’t roar or attack frantically; it walks with deliberate slowness, maintaining the film’s signature pacing. Even when electrocuted, it displays no dramatic reaction, simply convulsing mechanically in the water.
This lack of theatricality reinforces that the entity is not a being with emotions or vulnerabilities but rather a force of nature. The pool setting itself carries symbolic weight. Water is traditionally associated with the unconscious, death, and liminal spaces between life and the afterlife. Attempting to kill an entity of death in water—one of death’s traditional domains—is symbolically ironic. The chlorinated water, the artificial light, the public space: none of these provide safety. The blue-tinted cinematography during the pool sequence emphasizes coldness and emotional distance, making the scene feel detached despite its physical danger.
Why the Apparent Victory Doesn’t Resolve the Central Conflict
Many viewers leave *It Follows* frustrated because the climax doesn’t function like traditional horror movie endings. There’s no final girl who survives through cleverness, no monster definitively destroyed, no sense of hard-won safety. This is intentional. The film’s central conflict isn’t whether Jay can beat the entity—it’s whether she can live with the knowledge of inevitable death. Passing the curse to Paul represents Jay’s acknowledgment that survival is temporary; everyone dies eventually, either to the entity or to age and disease.
The plan to electrocute the creature works (or appears to), but this success feels hollow because it doesn’t change the fundamental situation. The entity will return, either for Jay or for Paul or for whoever comes next. This refusal to provide catharsis distinguishes *It Follows* from horror films that use climaxes to discharge tension. Instead, Mitchell leaves viewers in a state of perpetual unease. One practical limitation of this approach: not all audiences appreciate ambiguous endings, particularly in horror where many viewers seek reassurance that the threat has been neutralized. The film’s ending satisfaction depends entirely on whether you accept existential dread as a valid emotional conclusion.
The Interpretation Question—Has the Entity Been Destroyed or Merely Delayed?
Critical consensus remains divided on whether the pool electrocution actually damages the entity. Some film analysts argue that electricity is the first weakness the creature has ever demonstrated, suggesting a genuine vulnerability. Others contend that the entity simply adapted or temporarily retreated, as it has done throughout the film when confronted with obstacles or weapons. The film provides no scientific explanation for the creature’s nature, making it impossible to determine whether electrocution would have any permanent effect on something that may not be bound by physical laws. The distant figure in the final scene carries the entire burden of this interpretation.
If the figure is the entity returning, then the electrocution failed. If it’s an innocent bystander, then the group’s plan succeeded, and Paul must now manage his knowledge of the curse. If it’s Paul returning from elsewhere, then the threat has passed. Mitchell refuses to clarify, and no deleted scenes or director’s commentary have provided definitive answers. This ambiguity prevents the film from becoming dated or reducible to a simple explanation, but it also creates a critical warning: overanalyzing the ending risks misinterpreting Mitchell’s actual goal, which is to maintain discomfort rather than resolve it.
How the Pool Scene Compares to Other Supernatural Entity Confrontations in Horror
The electrocution trap in *It Follows* reflects minimalist horror traditions seen in films like *It Comes at Night* (2017) or *The Witch* (2015)—contemporary horror films that emphasize slow-burn dread over action-oriented climaxes. Unlike the elaborate final battles in *Poltergeist* or *The Exorcist*, where priests and scientists combine expertise to fight supernatural forces, *It Follows* relies on teenagers with limited resources. The trap is crude and almost embarrassing in its simplicity: friends pool money, buy a cord, and electrify a swimming pool.
The plan works or doesn’t work—there’s no middle ground, and the film presents this moment with the same static cinematography used throughout, refusing to heighten visual intensity for dramatic effect. This approach makes the climax feel more credible than more elaborate horror confrontations. Supernatural entity encounters in recent horror often emphasize the limitations of human response, a trend Mitchell helped establish with *It Follows*’ understated approach to the climax.
The Curse’s Nature and Why Traditional Victory Is Impossible
The entity in *It Follows* operates on a logic that makes permanent defeat structurally impossible. The curse manifests as an relentless pursuer that can take any human form and cannot be stopped except by passing the burden to someone else. This structure mirrors transmitted diseases, generational trauma, and mortality itself—concepts that cannot be cured, only managed. The pool electrocution may harm the entity temporarily, but the fundamental curse remains active as long as someone carries it.
Jay’s decision to sleep with Paul transfers responsibility to him, making his survival the film’s ongoing concern rather than providing closure for Jay’s arc. Understanding this logic explains why the climax doesn’t provide traditional catharsis. The entity cannot be defeated because it represents concepts that humans cannot escape: sexuality, consequence, mortality, and the burden of knowledge. Once Jay knows the entity exists, she cannot unknow it, just as viewers cannot unsee the film after understanding its themes. The final scene’s ambiguity is not a mystery to solve but a statement about the permanent condition of being alive and aware of death.
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