They Follow Just Announced A Huge Ensemble Cast
Maika Monroe will have to learn a lot of names.
Making a good sequel is an uphill battle, and truly great horror movie follow-ups feel like a rare breed nowadays. For every 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple or Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, there’s a Black Phone 2 or an Alien: Romulus that, while having some merit, can’t really justify themselves compared to their predecessors’ legacy. There’s a dichotomy that many sequels struggle with: is this something that serves as a genuine and thoughtful evolution of the original, or does it only exist because the first movie was successful?
It’s a question that looms over every potential follow-up to a beloved first installment, including the upcoming They Follow, the sequel to 2014’s instant cult-classic It Follows. A midnight festival darling about an STD (with a D for Demon) stalking a young woman after she sleeps with her boyfriend, the original grossed more than $23 million on a $1.3 million budget, and has been hailed as one of the best horror movies of the 2010s. The film pushed Maika Monroe into mainstream stardom, and now, 12 years later, she’s returning to the role of Jay Height, alongside a recently announced ensemble that’s filling out more of the world just teased in the original.
Now firmly established as a mainstream Scream Queen, Maika Monroe is returning to her Final Girl origins.
On July 15, Deadline reported that Monroe will be joined by 10 new cast members: Jackie Earle Haley, Michael Gandolfini, Justine Lupe, Melora Walters, Anna Mirodin, Tom Pecinka, Jayne Taini, Natalie Shinnick, Jan Hoag, and Ben Krieger. They’ll round out an ensemble that includes not only Monroe but Naomi Ackie, who was in final talks last month for a starring role and has now officially been confirmed. Many of the newcomers are no strangers to horror: Jackie Earle Haley played Freddy Krueger in the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, but Justine Lupe was in Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei’s Cam, and Jan Hoag was in Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell.
The original It Follows, being a small-scale coming-of-age film, had a smaller main cast that was mostly confined to Jay’s friend group. Given the disparate ages of the announced stars, it seems the scope of the sequel is expanding significantly, which means that Jay might encounter previous survivors of the title monster, and might even be helping out a new unfortunate victim of the curse – unless all the cast additions are manifestations of It. The plot has been kept under wraps thus far, and for good reason: They Follow is a sequel to one of the most acclaimed genre films of its era, which means it’s under immense scrutiny long before it arrives in theaters sometime in 2027.
They Follow is slated for 2027.
