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Sex Addiction in It Follows

 

            Sexual addiction is when a person compulsively engages in persistent or escalating sexual acts despite the harm it may cause to themselves or those around them. Such acts may include but are not limited to sex with prostitutes, anonymous sex with multiple partners, multiple affairs outside a committed relationship, habitual exhibitionism, and so on (Shelley-Griffin, Eric 1997. Sex & Love Addiction, Treatment & Recovery. Praeger). It Follows was released worldwide on March 27, 2015 and deals with a young woman's dilemma to stay alive by continuously and compulsively having sex as a means to ward off a curse intent on killing her. She literally forms a need for sex and uses the characters around her to satisfy it. .
             Directed by David Robert Mitchell, the film opens to a young woman fleeing her home in hopes of escaping something inside. She frantically gets in her car and drives away to the beach. Once there, she calls her father to apologize for how she's been acting recently and that she did so many "fucked up" things because she had no choice. After leaving a message on her father's voicemail, the scene cuts to black and reopens, the girl murdered and physically disfigured. The film then shifts to Jaime (Jay) in Detroit, Michigan. She and her sister Keely are discussing Jay's excitement to see a movie that night with her boyfriend, Hugh. In her privacy, Jay frequently is seen looking at herself in the mirror, analyzing her body and often looking discerned with what she sees. That night while Jay and Hugh are sitting in the theater waiting for the movie to start, they begin to play a game of "I Spy." When Hugh points out a little girl that Jay cannot see, he becomes frantic and demands they leave the theater and that they will reschedule because he is suddenly not feeling well. The next night, the two meet up once more and have sex for the first time in the back of Hugh's car.


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