Antonie Le's feature film debut, 'Followed,' is definitely not the worst horror nor found footage film, although it's also very far from the best. It has a lot of great tension and some of the scenes are genuinely creepy. Unfortunately, the story and plot are a convoluted mess that never quite comes together enough by the end. It is trying to say something about internet celebrity and commerce, but it mostly falls back on clichés. The cast are pretty decent though the main character's obnoxious vlogger persona surpasses unlikeability and transcends loathing.
Followed
2018
Action / Horror / Mystery / Thriller
Followed
2018
Action / Horror / Mystery / Thriller
Plot summary
Followed introduces us to aspiring social media influencer "DropTheMike." When he is offered the opportunity to get a nice stack of cash for sponsorship of his channel, he's joined by his video crew on a visit to one of the most haunted hotels in America. While there, he expects to have a horrific night of thrills and scares. What begins as a fun investigative challenge quickly descends into a personal hell of true evil, begging the timely question: how far would you go to pursue internet fame?
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
'Followed' shows the horrors of internet influencing
Who keeps knocking?
A vlogger known as "Drop the Mike" (Matthew Solomon) needs to do a great story to get 50,000 subscriptions for a sponsor. His crew goes to film at The Lennox Hotel on skid row in LA. It has a haunted history of a serial killer. There are also unrelated killings. They stay in room 1426 (13) which was the killer's room. They do this over 3 days of Halloween.
It is a found footage film and to make the quality a little better it has an editor before it is posted. The story line was decent. Using the found footage method subtracted from the feature. Also, the acting was bad. They needed different people plus the room yelling was stupid.
Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.
Creepy and effective genre effort
Eager to know what happened, the history of a controversial vlogger is researched by a mysterious stranger through his last-known uploads which feature him and a crew documenting the morbid history of a local hotel and coming across the disturbing guests that are haunting the building.
This was a pretty solid and enjoyable genre effort. One of the strongest features is the usual assortment of setups that are in play here with the backstory of the area and what's going on at the hotel. The backstory about the haunting of the hotel and the various urban legends that are told about the guests that have befallen the guests told about the hotel work rather nicely. In conjunction with the eerieness of the hotel layout and its general design, it sets a fantastic location for the creepiness to come. That comes into play with the series of incredibly tense and chilling encounters they have during their stay. With the first clue coming to pass from the elevator game they play, this one features plenty of chilling and highly creepy encounters where the group starts getting caught up in the ghosts that live in the hotel. From believing they're simply benign only to be proven otherwise with their physical incidents, getting emotionally and mentally upset by what's happening to them or the surreal descent into the basement which is some of the most terrifying scenes in the film, this section is impressive with quite a lot to like here. These are the film's positives while there were a couple of issues here. Most of the film's flaws here stem from the supposedly hilarious and humorous antics that he partakes in which are neither funny nor original. Making gags with prop hands, fake heads or body parts, constantly causing discomfort in his friends or loved ones and generally being a nuisance to anything and everything around him in the name of trying to be funny just causes him to be off-putting and irritating. That these antics aren't even that clever or unique as character traits as well don't help this and makes for a troubling time getting into the film, especially with the long intro that gives us a chance to see this in action quite frequently. The other real problem to be had here is the seemingly disjointed tone at work throughout the film. While most of his antics are designed to be funny and fail miserably, the idea that so many of these scenes that feature hauntings taking place against them or other strange events that are freaking them out yet two seconds later the group carries on like nothing's wrong. It happens frequently after many of the incidents and has a completely infuriating feeling once they keep behaving irrationally to what's going on. Lastly, there are way too many endings here where it could've done one or two instead of where it ends, making it drag on too much. These are what hold this one back overall.
Rated R: Graphic Language and Violence.