‘It Follows’ Maika Monroe To Box Office Success, Scares Up Possible Sequel

Maika Monroe stars in the hit movie It Follows, but neither she nor the horror flick are quite what we expected.

The indie horror movie It Follows is scaring audiences nationwide, however, it doesn’t follow the usual formula of hack and slash, blood and gore. Instead, it’s based on creating tension, paranoia, and dread.

Monroe, a 21-year-old Santa Barbara native who began her Hollywood career making pizza commercials and working as an extra, said she’s more comfortable riding the waves as a professional kiteboarder than being the next scream queen.

The indie film It Follows opened in four small theaters in New York and Los Angeles but was such a success that 1,200 more theaters released the film on March 27. Committed fans have been known to make the drive to nearby towns to watch it, according to the Inquisitr.

Maika plays a strong and independent horror character who still needs her friends to survive the movie.

The film It Follows is a retooling of conventional horror movies like Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th that punish teenagers for having sex by killing them.

In the film, Maika’s character, Jay, spends her time running from a demon she got after having sex in a car with a guy she hardly knows. Now, she must struggle with the issue of passing the demon on to someone else to get rid of it.

The film It Follows, which builds tension using psychological suspense to suck viewers in, has had such success its creators are already talking about a sequel.

The flick leaves a number of unanswered questions, which could easily be turned into sequels, and its $8.8 million box office numbers already have its creators thinking about possible titles, according to Entertainment Weekly.

The potential sequel may or may not involve Maika, who already has her next few projects lined up, including the young adult sci-fi flick The 5th Wave, about a teenager struggling to survive an alien invasion, along with the surfing movie The Tribes of Palos Verdes.

Before starring in It Follows, Monroe played the lead role in the 2014 horror movie The Guest, but she says that doesn’t make her the next scream queen.

Maika told Us Weekly she was afraid of Freddy Krueger as a child.

“I’d be better with it now, but Nightmare on Elm Street scared the crap out of me. At the time, probably, I couldn’t sleep! Because I knew in my dreams, I was going to be killed!”