I’ll Follow You Down - Movie Review

What do you get when a first time writer / director decides that Hailey Joel Osment can be a romantic leading man?

A movie that’s as terrible as it sounds.

Let’s discuss.

I’ll Follow You Down is a 2013 science fiction film brought to us by writer / director Richie Mehta. Who, from what I can tell, had no notable credits prior to this release. His previous work was mainly in short film, which makes a lot of sense considering how much of a failure this long form project was.

Somebody get Richie some Aloe for that sick burn.

Sssssssss…..

I can’t express to you in words how frustrating this movie is. It has a great initial concept, but the longwinded non-sensical path to a flaccid final reveal is physically painful to endure. I’m fairly certain my body attempted to shut down to spare my brain the suffering it was enduring. Much like with writers who focus on short form fiction, most filmmakers of that ilk encounter the same problem… pacing. Man does Richie not understand pacing or dialogue.

But I’ll give him some time to recover from the scorching I gave him a few lines up and we’ll discuss what the movie is about.

The film focuses on the family of a missing scientist, Gabriel, played by Rufus Sewell, as they come to terms with his vanishing. His son Erol (Osment) focuses on his work as a brilliant scientist in his own right while his mother, played by the love of my life Gillian Anderson, dives into the bottle. You see Gabriel’s disappearance was completely random. He and his wife had the perfect marriage and Gabriel was a perfect father to a gifted son. They were well off financially and both Gabriel and his wife are at the top of their perspective fields. Then Gabriel got on a plan and was never seen again. At least, not in this reality. As the years go on, Gabriel’s father in law refuses to let the matter rest and one day reveals to Erol that he thinks Gabriel traveled through time. Is Erol’s grandfather deranged, has the stress broken him, or is it possible that it’s true? Tragedies begin to pile as Erol chases his father’s ghost into a downward spiral of genius. Will Erol solve the mystery before it’s too late to save those he loves? Find out tonight on I’ll Follow You Down.

On second thought—don’t.

I’m not calling spoilers, none of you were going to watch this turd anyway.

The trailer for this film had me intrigued.

I’m always down for Rufus Sewell.

And lucky for us, we’ll always have Dark City.

Let’s confront the pint-sized elephant in the room. Haley Joel Osment is a talented actor as shown in his amazing turn in The Boys and The Kominsky Method, but he will never be a leading man. He is strictly Dick Miller material. He’s already one of the few child actors to succeed as an adult. He’s going to be a legend just but length of career alone, but I garuntee you this film won’t even be a blip on his lifetime achievement award montage.

Though I can’t blame him. This film was a dumpster fire from moment one.

Why?

Try reading a few pages of the script…

I’ll wake you up in a few minutes.

zzzzzz

zzzzzz

zzzzzz

Good Morning sunshine!

Yeah I know, It’s SHIT.

There is a massive difference between a stage play and a screen play. To an outsider to the arts, that statement might sound pretentious, but hear me out. I spent thirteen years performing on stage and near the end of my career became a writer / producer / director. I was lucky enough to earn the opportunity to work in almost every facet of theater productions. My final performance was actually as a writer/director/composor and narrator of a rock opera of sorts. I’m also a screen writer and wrote my first competition screenplay at the age of fifteen and have continued writing for competition ever since. I’m not award winning by any means, but I’ve written and been critique on both sides of the proverbial fence. Let’s break it down.

Stage Play - Strict adherence to structure of limited viewing window, i.e. the view of the audience upon the stage. Character movement and eccentricities are scripted. Actors are bound to their blocking and built in direction of script. Dialogue is much more grandiose and dialogue is more often a series of overlapping monologues.

Screen Play - A freeform story that includes general descriptions of events but allows for a fluidity to scenes giving director and actor the freedom to mold the story to the ensemble performance. Character building, blocking, and dialogue are up for interpretation as multiple takes are normally performed and there is no live audience to impress.

Thank you for coming to my seminar, please purchase a tee shirt from the gift shop and stop making bad movies.

Joking aside, this is what cripples the film.

You only need to look at the performance of Gillian Anderson to see what the film should have been. I feel so incredibly bad for her as her performance is heartfelt, intense, and true to life. She gives another outstanding turn in a role that is far beneath her career milestones and talents. Her portrayal of a broken heart may be one of the best in film history, but its stuck in this morass of bullshit. It’s as if she’s the only person in this production who realizes they were supposed to be making a movie. She’s the only character who doesn’t speak in wordy, pretentious—look at how insightful these characters are—sermons.

Which is mind-blowing when you consider the cast. Haley Joel Osment has amazing comic timing, especially when it comes to darker subject. He’s a genuinely funny person on and off screen. It’s really his shining talent since leaving the child star moniker behind. The director uses absolutely none of it. You can see Osment wanting to adjust a line or cut something short, his jaw clenches, his eyes roll slightly, and then he continues with the writer/director’s overly verbose text.

This movie made Victor Garber. I repeat, legend of stage and screen and Legend of Tomorrow look like a low rent scale player. Victor Garber is possibly one of the most charasmatic actors of all time. Watch his performance of John Wilkes Booth in the original staging of Assassin’s as proof or any of his other Tony award winning or Emmy nominated performances. This movie sucked the life out of him.

This script might be one of the most pretentious things I’ve ever read. Yes, I found a copy of the script online and double checked that the lines on film were actually submitted through WAG.

WAG, this person has a card—Give me mine already. I know I’m not successful, but I do more to support and inspire writers in the modern day than people writing this drivel.

But wait, THERE’S MORE!

I haven’t even gotten into the worst part of the movie.

The only reason I sat through this film was a hope that solution to the central mystery was going to be enlightening. Having recently watched the fantastic cosmic mystery flick, The Endless, I wanted to see if the ending was going to be something mind-blowing.

Spoiler—It’s worse than you could imagine.

You want to know why Erol’s dad dissapeared?

Well, do ya?

He somehow found a Nazi time travel device and sent it to himself in the past with instructions to go talk to Albert Einstein to ask him to build a navigation system for the machine.

I’m not joking.

The mission is to use a time machine perfected in the future to go back in time 50 years and ask an old patent clerk to build a navigational device using the rudimentary technology of WWII.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t make sense!

Erol pilots the thing with a flipping MacBook and is like, “Duh dad, ‘puters are cool.”

I nearly launched my remote through my MacBook screen, but my MacBook Pro is my best friend and I couldn’t do that to her. She didn’t do this to me.

Much like all horrors I’ve witnessed in my life, I did this to me.

This movie is complete trash. Every scene is lit like Glengarry Glenross. It’s dark, dingy and many times just flat-out hard to see. I watched the movie first on my laptop and then I tossed it up on my 4k QHD Samsung and in both aspects certain scenes were unviewable. For a non-horror movie this is flat-out unacceptable. These people are doing advanced theoretical theorems in what amounts to candle light in a University lab. It’s just needlessly melodramatic, but that’s the theme of this productions.

This is a film made by someone who is more familiar with theater. This may have succeeded as a stage play, but I doubt it. There’s nothing here ground breaking. Nothing here is sending a definite message. This is just another movie about daddy issues between rich white folks.

Don’t watch this movie. Use the precious time in your life to hang out with friends, go on an adventure, or wash your hair—anything to avoid watching this utter failure in entertainment.