Maika Monroe is giving evil a run for its money

LIKE A SHAPE-SHIFTING SPECTER LURKING just out of frame, the title of "scream queen" has been trailing in Maika Monroe's wake since her star-making turn in the 2015 breakout horror hit It Follows.

- MEGAN MCCLUSKEY

As Jay, the unassuming teenage protagonist of filmmaker David Robert Mitchell's indie cult sensation, Monroe cemented her place in the horror pantheon playing a young woman pursued by a lethal supernatural entity after contracting a sexually transmitted curse. It's a bizarre premise that initially gave Monroe pause.

"This can't be good," she remembers thinking after reading the script.

And she was right-in a sense. It wasn't just good. It was a commercial and critical smash, grossing $23.2 million worldwide against a $1.3 million budget and earning acclaim as a highly original genre gem. "I don't think any of us expected It Follows to blow up the way it did," Monroe says.

"Never in a million years." Nearly a decade later, Monroe, 31, is again in the limelight as the lead in one of the year's most anticipated horror films, Longlegs, in theaters July 12. With early reviews praising it as "a disturbing descent into hell" and "the scariest film of the decade," the new feature from writerdirector Osgood Perkins (I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House) debuted with a perfect 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its U.S. release-a rare feat for any film, but especially a horror movie.