Things aren’t going exactly as I’d hoped.
Main Cast: Adam LeClair, Stephanie Butler
Director: M. J. Anderson
I got a new release email from Screamify the other day…
One of the “new” releases was the 2015 movie FOLLOWED, which was found footage, and that’s our jam around here, so we sat down to it last night.
We probably should have just spent the night reading on the couch together.
FOLLOWED is written by Casey Campbell and directed by M. J. Anderson, and it stars Adam LeClair and Stephanie Butler as Andrew and Rachel, a young couple traveling from Chicago to LA, where Rachel has a job as violinist for the LA Symphony. Andrew wants to chronicle their adventure because he plans to propose to Rachel when they reach Colorado. Only Rachel comes down with a 24-hour bug almost as soon as they hit The Centennial State and he has to postpone his plans.
While roaming the hotel halls late at night, though, he feels like someone might be following him. He goes back into the room and senses someone outside. He opens the door but there’s no one there, so he goes to bed.
But that nagging feeling won’t leave, and over the next couple of days it just grows stronger until they finally see him outside their hotel room window. The police give chase and take the peeping Tom away and Andrew finally feels at ease. Until they pull up to an abandoned water park and he goes exploring, decides this is the perfect place to finally propose to Rachel, and they are interrupted by a familiar face.
I’ve just saved you an hour and 22 minutes and you’re welcome.
FOLLOWED wasn’t a BAD movie, per se. It was just not interesting. In the entire 82 minutes of this thing, it really is just a video diary of their trip across the country and Andrew’s various attempts to propose while we get an occasional glimpse of a man in a brown coat limping along in the background. Nothing of any real substance happens in the entire plot until maybe the last 10 minutes. We had to pause in the last 12 minutes to take a kid to work, but when we got home, I turned it back on, saying, “Ok, let’s finish this mess and see—” “If anything happens?” my wife finished.
It did, but by that point it was too little too late, and what DID happen was so out of nowhere (even though, yes, technically it had been foreshadowed in the first five minutes of the movie as a huge misdirect), it meant nothing.
The acting was fine, nothing special. Butler’s got more writing and directing credits than anything—even more than the writer or director—while LeClair has a whole two credits after this movie—but starred as an EMT in an episode of 24 and “uncredited cop” in two episodes of The Young and the Restless (2009 and 2010 respectively). Campbell hasn’t written anything since this, but DID star as “detective” in THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING as well as racking up a slew of other acting credits post-FOLLOWED, while directing RESCUE DOGS in 2016 and A SOUTHERN HAUNTING in 2023, so obviously this movie opened some doors for those involved…
On the bright side, Screamify is $2.99 a month, so I almost got my money’s worth for this month. One more movie and that subscription will have paid for itself. Then again, this one’s also streaming on Tubi and YouTube, a fact I really wish I’d known before and I could have picked something else to justify that Screamify sub. Cuz holy crap, it wasn’t this! FOLLOWED was a real snoozefest, so much so I was dozing off for about five seconds and my wife asked if I wanted to watch something else. Man, I should have said yes!
But if you must, you can catch it right here:
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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