Follow

I've seen a ton of found footage movies and they seem to always work best in the horror genre. It's a cheap and easy way to tell a scary story and get some good scares in. The trouble is a lot of them aren't very good so when you watch a found footage horror films there is always some hesitation. Follow is a found footage horror movie. I saw the trailer online before it screened at the Zed Fest Underground Horror festival and I was intrigued and also a bit hesitant. Right away, from the scenes depicted in the teaser it looked like a Blair Witch Project (one of the handful of found footage horror movies that was really good) knock off. But i thought I would check it out anyways since it was screening the night I was at ZedFest.

Follow, although a film obviously made on the cheap, was a great example of a good found footage movie and also a great horror film.

Follow tells the story (obviously all from the viewpoint of the camera) about a couple going out on a camping trip in the deep woods. The boyfriend Brian has never been camping in his adult life so his girlfriend Erin decides to document the trip with her video camera. Brian thinks it's an excuse to record a sex tape together in their tent but Erin makes sure it's there for the document of his maiden camping trip. As the night goes on they snuggle up to the campfire and Erin tries to freak the already apprehensive Brian out by telling him a story about the woods they are camping in. Of course it's a tale of death and mayhem in the same woods they are in, which sets up the films 3rd act. Brian wakes up later in the night and Erin is gone. He steps out of the tent into the woods with the cameras light as his only guide as he blindly tries to find Erin in the dark. The 3rd act is where all the fun happens so I won't say much more than that other than the payoff was well done and worked within the context of the campfire ghost story and the found footage style. I really enjoyed this short, I think the director knows what good old fashioned horror is and he creates a great atmosphere around those points. There aren't a lot of cheap jump scares, rather slow methodical well placed ones. It's obviously the way most horror should be but usually gets lost in over extended spatter or CG. The film is shot well (an obviously heavy influence from TBWP) and the acting seemed very natural, the actors probably improvised most of their scenes (another element from The Blair Witch). Overall, Follow is one of the better found footage films I've seen in the last little while and a really well made horror film. Worth a look if you like good old fashioned horror.

The 1st person shooting technique has become a bit of an overused medium to tell a story but in the situation given with this and many other horror films, it works pretty well and keeping it short helped a lot. If writer/producer/director Hytonen had tried to stretch this into a 90 minute film, I think it would become a bit tedious and boring.

While the story, or rather the setting, wasn't anything terribly new, it was the dialog and how it was presented that impressed me most. I can't help but wonder if much of the story was made up on the spot from the actors themselves as it all comes very naturally. If it was indeed all scripted then Hytonen made an awesome choices in actors.

This didn't really do anything for me. The film didn't justify anything essential.