Followed: Influência Maligna

About a ghost hunting vlogger offered a $250,000 sponsorship in exchange for a 3-night broadcast from a notoriously haunted hotel. Based on an actual hotel and events that transpired there. Ok, the cover (I got) has a devil, and a bound and gagged woman on the cover, neither of which appear in the movie. Oh, all sorts of strange things happen in this hotel, the crew loses its marbles, and ZERO of it is explained. It even has an ending that makes absolutely no sense. Acting gets REAL sketchy when they are tasked with being emotional. These filmmakers directly steal scenes and audio cues from Paranormal Activity. I really liked the idea of the "elevator game," and I am a sucker for both the paranormal and found footage. All that said, 4 stars for me.

I love horror films and I'm always looking for the next best story, creepy, disturbing, or scare factor. However, 2020 has been absolute garbage for horror since the anticipated films like The Conjuring 3 and A Quiet Place II, and several other solid ones have been pushed to 2021. But, to my surprise I came across this film and read reviews beforehand but ignoring the negative ones as I commonly do.

I enjoy found footage based horror films if they're done right (and without excessive camera shakes). This film was surprising for me. It's creepy and disturbing in some situations mixed in with the reality of Los Angeles.

I would say for a found footage based film, it was well done for what it is. I've seen some pretty crappy found footage films but the creepy/scare factor was lacking and camera stability was terrible. The story behind the elevator game was disturbing, sort of like a modern day version of "bloody Mary", except in an elevator while floor-hopping. This is worth the watch without having too much expectation; just enough to feed your curiosity.

I watch a lot of found footage films so admittedly I like them. This is one of the better ones, but definitely is full of the standard messes riddled with the genre. The acting is good, the scares are there, and the plot is intriguing due to the real history of the hotel. If you like the genre you will enjoy it. My main problems were the plot holes and the overtly contrived plot, but that's to be expected.

Overall I really enjoyed the locations they used. I'm a SoCal boy so I always have a biased on la movies with the history you can actually look up. The lead in this film was annoying but he was playing the typical YouTuber who wants fame. Ultimately the fate of the cast is in the air and we don't really get an explainer at the end. Nonetheless, I was in the zone looking for any little spooky stuff hidden in the film. Solid popcorn film. Not going to rewatch tho

This isn't the worst found-footage horror you'll see, although it's also very far from the best. It's a jumble of half-baked ideas borrowed from other, better movies, overlong and not well acted, though more experienced actors still could not have pulled off this crappy material. But its shortcomings wouldn't seem so stark if you went in blind...as opposed to having your expectations raised for something even halfway decent by the majority of early "user comments" here that are all clearly by crew members, their friends and family. (I mean, click on their handles--"mysteriously," almost none of them have ever commented about another movie before.) Reading those kinds of 10-star claims and then watching something this lame and amateurish turns an ordinary bad movie into an intensely dislikable one, since you feel like you've been duped. Filmmakers: Show a little spine. Don't get all your pals to post obviously fake "reviews" on IMBD and other forums. It will backfire, in that the people you lure in as a result are not only going to hate your movie, they're going to hold it against you in your future efforts.