Here’s Everything You Need to Know About They Follow
It’s taken 12 years for a sequel to It Follows to get off the ground. Here’s everything we know so far.
David Robert Mitchell is not a prolific director. His second feature, It Follows, was a sleeper hit in the summer of 2014, and has become a defining film of the so-called “elevated” era of horror movies while having twice the entertainment factor of its contemporaries. Since then, Mitchell has only directed one more movie: The divisive Under the Silver Lake (2018), which stars Andrew Garfield as an amateur detective investigating the disappearance of a mysterious woman in a surreal version of hipster L.A.
Now, after an eight-year absence from directing, 2026 is shaping up to be a busy year for Mitchell, who has the Anne Hathaway-Ewan McGregor sci-fi thriller (and rumored Cloverfield movie) The End of Oak Street set for August and the long-awaited sequel They Follow going into production. After such a long wait, having so many details coming out at once can be a bit overwhelming.
What is They Follow’s Release Date?
It’s a bit too soon to speculate on this one. The best we can say is that the movie is definitely happening — scattered, spoiler-free photos from the set began appearing online in mid-July, and have been faithfully reposted by Maika Monroe fan accounts on social media. For a while it seemed like They Follow wouldn’t be happening at all: It’s been 12 years since It Follows, and NEON first announced that the sequel was in development in 2023, which is approximately forever ago in the world of entertainment. So the fact that it’s currently shooting is exciting in itself.
Based on the timeline, and the fact that the original It Follows premiered at the Cannes Film Festival — an achievement the team will presumably want to repeat — we’ll conservatively speculate that They Follow will probably come out in the summer or fall of 2027.
What is the plot of They Follow?
“Sorry, babe”
It Follows followed (no pun intended) Jay Height (Maika Monroe), a young woman living in suburban Detroit in an ambiguous time period — it’s the past, present, and future all at once, which is neat — whose romance with her boyfriend turns into a nightmare after the two consummate their relationship for the first time. After the afterglow, Jay wakes up in an abandoned building tied to a chair, as Hugh (Jake Weary) explains that he’s very sorry, but he’s being pursued by an unstoppable shapeshifting force that wants to take his life, and that the only way to get rid of it is to pass it on to her through sexual intercourse. Now burdened with this supernatural STD, Jay and her friends have to find a way to stop the terrifying It without dooming anyone else.
The cast of the sequel to It Follows, They Follow, features a cast made up of both younger and more experienced actors (more on that below), which suggests that the curse has been passed on to a new generation. As far as specifics go, we don’t have much, outside of what Monroe revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast: “It’s very dark,” she said. “We’re pushing the boundaries on this one for sure.”
Who is in the cast of They Follow?
Naomi Ackie poses with toys of her Star Wars character, Jannah, in 2019.
It Follows was a breakout movie for star Maika Monroe, establishing her as one of the leading “scream queens” of her era. Since then, she’s solidified that status with leading roles in films like Longlegs (2024) and Victorian Psycho (2026), making her return to Mitchell’s Follow-verse even more exciting. Monroe will reprise her role as Jay, the young woman at the center of the original film’s sinister celibacy PSA; earlier this year, she teased the character’s arc in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying, "It's not at all what I expected, where you would find [Jay], which I thought was really interesting."
British actress Naomi Ackie, who’s probably best known to Inverse readers for her roles in The Rise of Skywalker, Mickey 17, and I Love Boosters, has also joined the film as a new character. We’re not sure what her part in the story is just yet, but it’s a leading role that was announced separately from the rest of the supporting cast. Details on that front came in July, with the release of a cast list that includes both established character actors like Paul Thomas Anderson favorite Melora Walters and newcomers like Anna Mirodin, whose biggest credit to date is on the Canadian teen series Popularity Papers. (Plus a young Gandolfini, as a treat.) Here’s the full list:
- Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen, the 2010 A Nightmare on Elm Street remake)
- Justine Lupe (Succession, Cam)
- Anna Mirodin (Popularity Papers)
- Jayne Taini (Unbelievable)
- Michael Gandolfini (Daredevil: Born Again)
- Tom Pecinka (American Rust)
- Melora Walters (Boogie Nights, Magnolia)
- Ben Krieger (California Dreaming)
- Natalie Shinnick (The Testament of Ann Lee)
- Jan Hoag (3 From Hell)
Is there a trailer for They Follow?
Not yet! In the meantime, here’s the trailer for The End of Oak Street, which (as far as we know) is unrelated to It Follows and They Follow except for the fact that it comes from the same director. It opens in theaters on August 14, 2026, and looks pretty good, actually!
