Followed: Check-In for the Scary Cecil Hotel Stay You’ve Always Wanted

The other day I saw a story on Looper about an “intense paranormal horror you can stream on Amazon.” That’s how I learned about a 2018 movie called Followed.

That’s also how I learned there’s a new sub-genre of “found footage” films called “desktop films” or “Screen Life.” The first mainstream “desktop film” was 2014’s Unfriended. Followed follows in its footsteps.

Let’s take a look at what Followed is all about, who’s in it, its ratings, its trailer, and a brief review.

Followed Storyline

Here’s the description on Prime Video:

A social media influencer receives a lucrative offer to grow his channel and gathers a crew to visit a haunted hotel. What began as a fun investigation turns into a personal hell of evil, begging the question: how far would you go for fame?

Haute Gothic offers to sponsor vlogger Mike, host of the YouTube-like channel “DroptheMike,” and give him $25,000 if he can get to a certain number of viewers. Somehow that translates into him not only asking people who watch his videos to subscribe but also polling his “minions” as he calls them where he and his crew should stay for Halloween.

It’s a pretty much unanimous consensus: the Lennox Hotel.

The fictional Lennox Hotel is clearly based on the Cecil Hotel with all of its murders and suicides. Its most notable cases are easily recognizable, just the names are changed slightly.

For instance, “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez becomes “Night Crawler” David Olmos. And Elisa Lam becomes tourist Meghan Kim, who still has an infamous elevator video and an “untimely demise.” However, instead of being found in the hotel’s water tank, she’s found in the basement in the back boiler room.

Anyway, so the Lennox Hotel is where Mike and his crew head and it’s way more intense than what they bargained for.

Followed Cast

Followed stars Matthew Solomon (Mike), Tim Drier (Christopher), Sam Valentine (Dani), Caitlin Grace (Nic), and John Savage (haunted hotel historian Wallace Fleischer).

Followed Trailer

Followed Ratings

It’s so far gotten mixed reviews.

As of this post, Amazon reviewers give it 3.7 out of 5 stars. It’s got 4.7 out of 10 on IMDB. 65% of Google users liked it. It clocks in with a 73% Tomatometer critics score and a 45% audience one.

Followed Review

If you can stomach the acting —or “overacting,” as one Google reviewer put it— it’s an okay horror movie. Veteran actor John Savage easily delivers the best performance of the bunch.

Matthew Solomon as Mike was a lot to stomach, though. The title of one Amazon review sums it up best in describing Mike as an “insufferable main character.” Harsh, but accurate.

However, that said, Solomon and his overacting did what he needed to do: portray a stereotypically obnoxious vlogger trying to get more subscribers. Mission accomplished.

If you watched the Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel and were hoping for more drama and action, that’s what Followed delivers. You see the ghosts. They go for the jump scares. They even try to weave in a bit of mystery.

No spoilers here, but I will say the end does have a bit of a twist, as far-fetched as it may be.

I didn’t find Followed scary at all. I thought the part where a guy in a devil’s face mask briefly followed and harassed Mike and Dani was the most intense part, but nothing was truly scary.

It was, however, pretty much everything I think anyone who ever wanted to stay at the Cecil looking for thrills and chills might hope for. For that reason alone I’m giving it three skulls, but that’s being generous. It’s really more of a two and half skull movie.

Where to Watch Followed

You can watch Followed on the following streamers:

• iScreeningRoom
• Amazon Prime Video (affiliate link)
• iTunes
• Google Play
• Fandango Now
• Microsoft
• Vudu

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For More Info

Visit followedhorrormovie.com.

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Do you like found footage kind of films?