I received a screener for the James Rich directed and co-written Followers at the start of March. I then promptly managed to both lose the screener within my emails as well as completely forgot I even had it in the first place. Luckily I stumbled across it the other day, as having watched this, I thought it was pretty great. There was a film by the same director released in 2022 titled Follower. I'm not sure if this is a sequel to that movie or a remake, as it features the same actors, with the prologue seemingly being made up of footage from that other film.
Three friends, Riley (Molly Edelman), Sam (Gigi James), and Heather (Revell Carpenter) have gone on an annual camping trip. It isn't long into their trip when they discover someone had been hunting them, with the aim to livestream their murders to the internet. Thanks mainly to the cool headed Sam, the killer is stopped and the friends escape. Five months later Heather convinces the friends to meet up again, at the home of her rich boyfriend, but associates of the camping trip killer have been following their movements, and see this as the perfect time to finish what their friend started.
With the antagonists it is easy to see how they were inspired by some of the toxic masculinity that seems to have grown in recent years. These young women-hating white men model themselves on alpha wolves, wearing crude wolf masks, filming their exploits to influence other angry men online. This was a neat contrast to the lighter side of social media, with Heather in particular being heavily into social media influencing, and constantly streaming to her fans. Both sides of the coin have benefitted from the past, with the girls having a Netflix type documentary made about their previous ordeal, while the camp killings have grown the 'fanbase' for the alpha wolves. The relative ineptitude of the killers was fun, with some neat moments where the mask has slipped. Usually when the killers have had the tables turned on them is when they begin to beg and apologise. The amount they spoke felt fresh rather than annoying, so that was cool. This feeling of them being a bit rough and out of their depth brought to mind the antagonists of You're Next.
I didn't know that there had been a previous film in the series (seemingly), so at first I thought that Followers was just swift at getting to the horror, as within the first ten minutes events had progressed dramatically. This prologue sequence was around fifteen minutes in total, then there was a ten minute buffer zone to get the friends to agree to meet up, until the action moves to the large house for the remaining forty five minutes. This made the film feel like it shot along at a fast pace, so was not a movie that ever felt like it was dragging. There were a fair few death scenes here, with the antagonists having a simple and blunt approach to outsiders questioning what they are doing. The kills were never drawn out, and people rarely hesitated with defending themselves. For all the killings, this was blood free a lot more of the time than it felt it should have been, gun shots in particular seemed to rarely ever result in any blood being shown on screen, other than some nice blood sprays from off camera.
Followers felt like a horror film made for the modern world, with the obsession with social media from both protagonists and antagonists alike, it felt like they were both current. There isn't a single strong male presence to be found here, but that is purposeful. The bad guys are all incel misogynists, while all good male characters seem to end up dead when attempting to save the 'damsel in distresses. This felt like a reaction to all the repulsive women haters of the world. Due to the fast pace, and the unexpected moments (including a shock ending), this was a delight to watch. Followers came exclusively to SCREAMBOX on March 12th.
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