Prime Time: Follow Me (2020)

Writer-director Will Wernick may be a name familiar to you if you made the decision a few years ago to watch one of the other movies titled Escape Room, but not THE better Escape Room. Follow Me is, funnily enough, another movie based around an escape room experience. It’s worse than either of the aforementioned escape room movies though, which makes me think it is time for Wernick to stop crafting movies around that concept  

Keegan Allen plays Cole, the kind of narcissistic social media “superstar” I loathe. He spends his time accepting various challenges, staging various pranks, and generally doing what social media people do. Hus latest adventure is going to be his best yet, thanks to a friend who has hooked him up with a Russian contact who will get them into the ultimate escape room experience. It isn’t long until things become much more dangerous than expected though, which leaves Cole and co. fighting to stay alive.

Follow Me is just bad, and it’s bad from start to finish. It isn’t incompetent. It isn’t too boring (well, depending on how patient you are once you guess where things are heading). It’s bad. The core idea already feels far too tired and overdone, the cast aren’t good enough to sell most of their scenes, and I get the sense that Wernick feels as if he is being smart and playful for most of the movie, despite it all being tiresomely predictable and dumb.

Although I didn’t like his character, Allen does okay in the lead role. I believed him anyway, which is more than I could say for a couple of the cast members playing his friends, and let’s not start on the many actors cast from the Stereotypical Russian Thug Casting Agency. The fact that I didn’t care about anyone, good or bad, meant that I didn’t care how things ended, although I did start to hope for the film to end in a way that would actually surprise me (which Jr didn’t manage).

I guess some people might enjoy this. If you are desperate enough for another thriller set in an escape room environment then this might just scratch that itch. The traps aren’t well-designed, there’s never any real tension, any attempted commentary on social media videos/audiences does not work, and the end credits just underline a sense of utter pointlessness.

Those who follow me for movie recommendations should avoid Follow Me. All the basic elements are in place, but nothing really clicks. Ironic, as the central character is all about the clicks.

3/10

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