Dir - Marcus Harben
Overall: WOOF
One of the worst found footage movies ever made, (which is saying a lot), Followers also tragically doubles as the lone full-length from writer/director Marcus Harben who died shortly after its completion. Any mockumentary about purposely grating influencers is bound to alienate its audience by design, and this one adheres to all the mistakes that a trend of recent "social media personality + ghosts = likes" movies do. More than just the fact that it has top to bottom insufferable characters, scary music, cheap jump scares, and is edited in a kinetic fashion that is horrendously ill-fitting for found footage, it is also so poorly written and bafflingly executed that it borders on incompetence. The story is aggressively rushed, establishing none of our moronic and obnoxious characters, just barreling through so many aggressively loud and spastic freaky moments that viewers are bound to be insulted by its glaring narrative handicaps. Footage is captured from a slew of cameras that we never see, (frequently with multiple angles for each scene), much of it is aesthetically of a professional movie quality as if Harben forgot that he was going for "raw" footage, there are reaction clips from fans that apparently span fifty days yet everyone in them is wearing the same clothes and shooting from the same location in each one, (signifying that they were all actually filmed at the same time), and the movie's ghost even does an impromptu rave dance for everyone.
Dir - Kelsey Egan
Overall: MEH
The first of three full-length dystopian sci-fi films from writer/director Kelsey Egan, Glasshouse is floaty and pretentious in its mannerisms, but it offers up an interesting variant on societal collapse in cinema. With a good amount of CGI in the areal establishing shots, it turns the St. George's Park in Gqeberha, South Africa into an isolated Victorian-esque hothouse sanctuary against an immediate-acting airborne virus that deprives people of their memories and has also seemingly wiped out the entire animal population. The specifics are herky-jerky at best, (a mysterious stranger shows up who is naturally immune to the disease, and the family that he infiltrates suffers varying symptoms when exposed), but this is not crucial information to the narrative which is exclusively concerned with its individuals and how they deal with their own perceptions of happiness in a world that has robbed everyone of so much. Besides Adrienne Pearce who turns in an often ridiculous performances as the pontificating matriarch of the family, the rest of the cast do solid work. Hilton Pelser's stranger is not to be trusted and proves this eventually, but he makes for a protagonist with plenty of gray area, since we can sympathize with his desperation and scheming when given the chance to belong somewhere again, even if his actions are unsavory.
Dir - David Yarovesky
Overall: MEH
A big, glossy, and loud dark fantasy romp aimed at children who are at the age to find Goosebumps frightening, Nightbooks sees director David Yarkovesky and the screenwriting duo of Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis adapting J. A. White's novel of the same name. Sam Raimi also attached his name as producer, and the horror icon's influence of screaming crones and bodily fluid spewing is unmistakable in several instances, be it in a PG-rated vein that is more akin to Drag Me to Hell than Evil Dead. While Krysten Ritter hams it up as the villainous neon witch who lures children to her apartment in order for them to regale her with sorrowful tales, (all of which is explained in an appropriately silly twist-reveal climax), little Lidya Jewett and Winslow Fegley are the ones tasked with the heavy emotional lifting as her prisoners. Both youngsters turn in fine performances even as the presentation cranks things up to ridiculous and groan-worthy extremes, with cartoonish CGI set pieces and a pristine sheen brightly coloring every last digital frame. Plot wise it is a cliche-fest, but there is enough of a balance between high stakes Brothers Grimm macabreness and cutesy storytelling to fit the targeted family demographic.
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