Two Absurdities

Rating: 7/10 (31 March 2017)

When it comes to atmosphere and creepiness, "It Follows" does such a good job that one can only be dismayed the inclusion of a couple of unnecessary absurdities.
Jay is a young woman in college who has sex with a guy named Hugh. Then he chloroforms her, takes her to a remote location, and ties her up to a wheelchair. Eventually, a slow-moving, zombie-like being appears, heading in their direction. Hugh explains to Jay that this being will follow her unrelentingly until it catches her. She must avoid this being until she has sex with someone else, thereby passing the curse on to him. The only people that can see this being are those who are presently being pursued, like Jay, and those who have been pursued by it in the past, like Hugh.
Needless to say, it is an act of evil selfishness to pass this curse on intentionally, so we wonder why he didn't just have sex with Jay and then leave her to her doom. The reason, as Hugh explains, is that once it kills Jay, it will then go back to the previously cursed person and follow him. So, Hugh wants Jay to know what is happening so that she will avoid being caught by this being long enough to pass it on to someone else. In other words, he wants Jay to stay alive and pass it on for his own selfish reasons, not out of any concern for her.
The first absurdity in all this is the whole chloroform-and-tied-to- the-wheel-chair bit. Hugh could have had sex with Jay and then driven her out to the remote place, where he could explain what he has done to her while waiting for the being to show up. Furthermore, Jay was sure to tell the police after being abducted that way, which she does. But if he had simply told her the story and let her see the being, the police would have ignored her had she repeated it to them. There would have been less risk for him that way.
Those unnecessary melodramatics aside, the next absurdity is Hugh's encyclopedic knowledge on the subject. In the novel "Dracula" and in many vampire movies made based on it, there is a Van Helsing character, a learned professor who, among his many accomplishments, happens to be an expert on vampires. He explains all the rules, the ones involving crosses, mirrors, sunlight, and wooden stakes. So informed, the characters in the movie and we in the audience know what needs to be done. The question is, how did Hugh become the Van Helsing to this being that follows people around, how does he know all the rules? In other words, how does he know that if Jay dies the being will start pursuing him around again? Later, as Jeff, Hugh says he caught the curse from some woman he picked up in a bar whose name he didn't even know. So, how did he know that sex with her was the cause of his troubles? And if the woman in the bar told him, how did she know?
If the curse is passed on through sex, there must have been a first person who acquired it spontaneously and not through sex, otherwise, we would have an infinite regress. There is no reason to think this first person would have known the rules, even if he had lived long enough to pass it on, which seems unlikely, since no one would have told him why some slow-moving person was walking toward him, especially since no one else could have seen it.
There was no need for the abduction scene, and there was no need for Hugh/Jeff to have Van Helsing-like knowledge, only what he had acquired from personal experience, which need not have been much.