Followers

FOLLOWERS (2017)
Directed by : Ryan Justice
Written, Produced and Edited by: Ryan Justice, Ian Longen, Jason Henne
Director of Photography: Ian Longen
Cast:
Brooke: Amanda Delaney
Caleb: Justin Maina
Nick: Nishant Gogna
Jake: Sean Michael Gloria



                                                                                   “Beware What You Share”

     FOLLOWERS continues a trend of using social media as a weapon of horror. Directed by Ryan Justice, it’s a flip on recent frights like UNFRIENDED and LIKE ME in which the perils of revealing too much about ourselves on the internet leads us into dangerous waters…or in this case, into the woods.

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     Brooke and Caleb are the golden couple, both beautiful and popular; they’re on-line sensations, she with her instructional yoga videos, he with fitness. Each has thousands of followers. The camera is always rolling, more so now that they’re celebrating their one year anniversary (he’s planning to propose, while we learn she has another man on the side). The first section of FOLLOWERS is quite good, as we watch them load up their car for a camping trip, stop at a trucker’s dive for lunch, then talk (and sometimes bicker) in the car. Actors Amanda Delaney and Justin Maina have an easy, natural chemistry; they sound like every other couple, teasing at times and frustrated at others. It’s only when they set up camp that we begin to get a sense of foreboding. We know something lurks in the woods (set up in a quick but eerie prologue), and it only gets worse as daytime turns to nighttime and our hero and heroine are suddenly forced to face the dangerous results of putting out too much personal information on the world wide web.

     It’s at this point that FOLLOWERS comes up with a nifty twist I didn’t see coming. Then it backtracks for the mid-section of the picture as we’re introduced to two other characters (no spoilers here). Suffice to say this duo plays a key role in the action, with mixed results. Director Justice seems to be aiming for comedy with the interaction between Nick (Nishant Gogna) and Jake (Sean Michael Gloria), but ultimately they’re simply irritating (particularly Gogna who whines and complains every step of the way). His is one of those annoying characters the audience begins rooting against; you can’t wait for him to get it. The wild card is Jake, who has a devilish plan up his sleeve. Gloria delivers a solid (and well-written) monologue about the evils of social media and our overwhelming desire to be liked by total strangers. “We’re descending into slaves of technology,” he moralizes, “that eat, sleep, drink and breathe electronic validation.” He calls out Facebook with the most startling statement in the film by saying, “We’re prostitutes for ‘LIKES.’ It’s a great scene, played directly to the camera, and Gloria nails it.​

     Unfortunately (and here’s where the movie beings to collapse), the final third of FOLLOWERS takes yet another U-turn and falls into cliched horror territory as we learn about yet another host of characters (a different set of ‘followers’, if you will) that bog the movie down into unnecessary religious dogma that we’ve seen before. Three writers are credited with the screenplay for FOLLOWERS (director Justice, Ian Longen and Jason Henne). I’m afraid too many cooks have spoiled the soup because there’s one too many ingredients in what was starting to smell like a tasty dish. If Justice had stuck with the central idea of how sharing too much about oneself on social media can backfire, he might have really had something. The last section of the film feels tacked on, as though it came from an entirely different (and unwanted) movie. “No one pays attention (to the dangers of social media) until someone gets hurt,” Jake complains at one point. If FOLLOWERS would have stuck with that theme (and dropped the religious mumbo jumbo), it would be a much stronger film.
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     As it is FOLLOWERS is a worthy addition to the subgenre of ‘social media horror’, but I can’t help but be disappointed in what could have been. This cautionary tale, like its pretty protagonists, goes off the beaten path and devolves from a smart thriller into an all-too familiar landscape.



From the back row,
Darren McCullah