Mark Reviews Movies: FOLLOWED

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 18, 2020

Setups are important, and they might be even more important when it comes to horror. Take the best scene of Followed, in which a man rides an elevator from one floor, to another, to another, and to a couple more. On its own, it's just a mundane activity, and without a reasonable context for suspense, we'd wonder why anyone would think such a dull act could be frightening. Screenwriter Todd Klick and director Antoine Le, though, tell us what might happen if this character selects floors in a certain sequence, and because of that, there's a real sense of dread in the combination of knowing something might happen and not knowing what the specific thing might be.

The point here is that the filmmakers clearly understand the game of creating the chills of suspense and the frights of the payoff. The aforementioned sequence proves that argument.

It's suspenseful, especially in the way that Le paces the scene so that we see every step of the elevator ride, meaning that we just have more time to wonder if something will happen and to worry about what that something could be. It toys with us, particularly in how the lights of the elevator start flickering and how the final stop in the elevator adds a few more beats before that something does happen. The payoff, too, is just right, showing us just enough to know that something supernatural has occurred but displaying enough restraint to let us sit with that knowledge.

The whole of Klick's screenplay is one of setups and payoffs. In the early part of the movie, most of them work, and that imbues a certain degree of trust that the big payoffs—the story's framing gimmick and the central mystery of what's actually happening in a supposedly haunted hotel—will work just as well. They don't, though, and that's why this movie, which was made by people who obviously do know how the horror game should work and why it operates in that way, is ultimately disappointing.

The setup is clever. Indeed, there are two premises here. The first, which establishes the main story, is that an online video creator named Mike (Matthew Solomon), who specializes in examining the macabre and the supernatural, has a chance for a big sponsorship from a clothing retailer. All he has to do is reach a certain number of subscribers to his "vlog" (Do people still use that term?). Mike's idea is simple: He and his crew will stay at the infamous Hotel Lennox in their native Los Angeles—a place that was once home to a serial killer in the 1980s, has been the location of multiple mysterious suicides and murders, and has a history of alleged ghost sightings.

The second premise is that the tale of Mike and his crew, spread out over several videos recorded over Halloween weekend, is presented to us by an unknown figure, sitting at a computer, playing each video, and interacting with text and video messages from those curious about why someone is on this particular computer. There's a neat double mystery established by Klick, and for a while, the more meta one—of the person on the computer—adds a layer of discomfort and danger to the narrative.

The actual story being watched on that computer is a pretty familiar one. Mike, his cinematographer Chris (Tim Drier), his editor Nic (Caitlin Grace), and Chris' long-time crush Danni (Sam Valentine) record their every move inside the hotel. Unlike some found-footage tales, we understand why all of this is being recorded: It has to be for material for the vlog, and Mike is a self-absorbed, fame-seeking jerk, who is so used to recording everything in the hunt for views and subscribers that he apparently has forgotten that a camera has a power button.

This unsympathetic protagonist (whose personality is unfortunately softened by way of his fiancée, played by Kelsey Griswold) adds a layer of satirical bite to the proceedings, which otherwise unfold with skillful predictability. The crew investigates the hotel inside and out, from top to bottom, tracing the serial killer's path, looking for anything strange, and trying to find evidence about what might have happened to a recent guest, whose body was found burned in the basement.

Odd sounds come from the vents. The basement is off-limits, but a drone gets the crew some good footage of the dark and dank halls—before the device violently goes offline. The team sits in their room, as a faraway camera captures lights flickering, the door opening, and Mike's favorite prank prop—a fake severed head—falling from its perch. A few of them start seeing silhouetted figures in the hallways, one of which leans back his or her head until it basically snaps from the neck.

As formulaic as all of it is, most of this is effective for a while, because Le and Klick so efficiently create various levels of mystery to the narrative and atmosphere within the hotel. Followed, though, falls into an all-too-familiar trap by ignoring its own logic and setups later, giving us generic sequences akin to the noisy hijinks of a haunted house, as well as a resolution that's little more than a series of hasty twists. When the setup possesses this much promise, the payoff can't be this underwhelming.

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