Review of the film ‘Follow Her’ (2022)

In order to write this review, some basics of cinema have to be explained: Cinema is a language shared by film-makers and spectators. It is a non-literal language: spectators know that some images are ideograms that have a specific meaning beyond what they show. Spectators are used to sexual, violent and gruesome scenes being frequently replaced by ideograms or shown only partially. But then, film-makers subverted the language to mislead the spectator about what happens – the most typical one, having characters falsely appearing to die, as early as in the Flash Gordon episodes around 1940. So, for more than eighty years now, the spectators’ Rule One is ‘it only happens if it happens on-screen’. Films assuming otherwise are only bound for failure.

As for the film, it features Jess, a girl living in New York, struggling to climb up the ladder of fame and make a living. She constantly broadcasts her actions in ‘Live Hive’, a YouTube of sorts, where she gets little money but is in the verge of entering the Top Ten where the money is. She goes to auditions for TV ads and she poses for photographers, but in order to make ends meet she hires herself for private performances, i. e. letting a guy tickle-torture her. She covertly broadcasts these performances using concealed cameras with filters that blurry the faces of people – except for when they fail. One day, she is hired as a writer to work on a script. She travels to the countryside and meets Tom, then walks with Tom to his isolated residence – and when she reads the script she discovers that it just narrates what happened since they met.

The problem with the story is that it is puritan. Now, puritan people exist in reality, so there is nothing wrong with them being present in fiction. It is the puritan storytelling that ruins it – behind a façade of witty language and uninhibited characters, what we get are judgemental views. The consequences of revealing the tickler’s face are unbelievable without providing context. Tickling is implied to be as much scandalous as prostitution, which only leads the spectator to disbelieve the entire film. Really? Tickling? It is so much ridiculous as for the spectator to wonder – could it be that the tickle session is meant to represent prostitution, in spite of no nudity and no sex shown? No way – Rule One. Now, the rest of the film works fine: great dialogues, good developments in the story, good direction, good camera handling and excellent acting – but there is no way to surmount the unbelievable story that tries to be a cautionary tale, but gets no further than being a hate declaration to YouTubers. Being unbelievable is a major fault for a thriller.

Time to reckon the good job done on acting: Luke Cook is brilliant, Dani Barker is excellent, and Eliana Jones and Mar Moses are fine.

All in all, a film doomed from the start by its judgemental plot. 2 out of 5.

Title:	Follow Her
Genre:	Thriller
Year:	2022
Nationality:	United States
Colour:	Colour
Director:	Sylvia Caminer
Writer:	Dani Barker
Cast:	Eliana Jones, Mark Moses, Luke Cook, Lorraine Farris, Bettina Bilger, Dani Barker, Brian Vincent, Justin L. Wilson, Sawandi Wilson, Chris Gaunt, Cristala Carter, Sibyl Santiago, Clay Vanderbeek, Anastasia Romashko, Jean-Remy Monnay, Caycee Black, Maayan Laufer, Darrell Thorne, Charlotte Shovilin, Joy Decker, Westley Valentin
Producer:	Dani Barker, Sylvia Caminer, Michael Indjeian
Co-producer:	Sibyl Santiago
Executive producer:	Barbara Erysian, Manuel Freedman, Fenner Osmond Friedman, John A. Gallagher, Chris Gaunt, Cindy Joy Goggins, Mike Hassan, Rich Hassan, Leslie Whirly Robinson
Production designer:	Noa Rachel Bricklin
Cinematographer:	Luke Geissbuhler
Film editor:	Alex Gans
Casting:	Judy Henderson
Art Director:	Betty Austin
Music:	Alexander Arntzen, Brandon Kress
Running time:	95 minutes
Language:	English