Ryan Justice is living his dream.
Justice, 30, a Tampa native and University of South Florida graduate, can barely contain his excitement when he calls to talk about his directorial debut, Followers.
“I always thought, if I ever get to make a feature film, it probably won’t get a theatrical release,” he says, “and especially on a movie that cost so little to make.”
Yet, here he is. Beginning today (Fri., Mar. 23), Followers opens in 10 major markets across the U.S., including at Tampa’s Studio Movie Grill, where it will screen for seven days.
It’s a huge accomplishment considering Justice and his main collaborators, Ian Longen and Jason Henne, spent years trying to reach this moment. Shot over 10 days in Tampa and St. Pete for less than $50,000, Followers is not only an accomplished debut, it’s a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking thrill ride that should keep viewers talking long after the credits roll.
Justice and Longen, his co-writer and co-producer, came up with the idea for Followers during a night of brain-storming. They wanted to do something that was relatively inexpensive, but that would still pack a punch. They settled on the "found footage" genre, envisioning a thriller where a young couple who share intimate details about their daily lives online are unknowingly followed deep into the woods for what becomes the camping trip from Hell.
Justice tapped two longtime friends, Sean Michael Gloria and Nishant Gogna, whom he knew could not only act, but also improvise, to star as documentary filmmakers Jake and Nick. He cast Justin Maina, a frequent male model on the Home Shopping Network, as his lead, Caleb. And it was Maina who introduced him to Amanda Delaney, who had just moved to Pinellas County, who ended up being just right for the role of Caleb’s online fitness blogger girlfriend, Brooke.
“If I was going to make a horror film, I wanted to make sure the horror resonated, and it had a really great story,” Justice says. “Some of my favorite movies in the horror genre, and the thriller genre, is when they take normal, everyday people, they put them into extreme situations and their true nature comes out.”
More, he wanted Followers to have a message, and to him, society’s growing reliance on social media provided the perfect context.
“I wanted something that was a little controversial. I definitely think it’s very relevant,” he says. “It’s not necessarily the social commentary. I wouldn’t say this movie is hugely, socially controversial, but I do believe the basis of the theme, how scary all the social media and being able to track down, I feel like that is super scary and super extreme. I wanted to live in that for a little bit. I hadn’t seen anything like that with social media yet.”
Some people have told Justice that Followers reminded them of other, recent social media horror films like 2014’s Unfriended.
“I’m like, ‘No, that’s supernatural.’ A lot of those films are supernatural,” he says. “This is like, I love human on human, where it’s not the ghosts that are going to kill you, it’s somebody who is sitting right next to you who is going to kill you. That’s what I think is scariest. That can actually happen.”
Justice loves talking about the movies that have shaped his worldview as a director, from Star Wars to Carlito’s Way to the bombastic action flicks of the 1990s starring Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme. For Followers, he wanted to mine two specific influences: M. Night Shyamalan and Quentin Tarantino, to create something unexpected.
“I’m not a big gore guy, I’m not. I don’t want to gross people out by the blood, I want to freak people out by the actions,” he says. “I love M. Night, and obviously M. Night had an influence with us when we were coming up with our plot, with the twists and turns. And one thing I wanted to do, let’s do something original. How can we blend Tarantino and M. Night? Let’s do a non-linear found footage film, and that’s what we did.”
The end result is a low-budget exercise ripe with tension and changing human dynamics that includes not one, but two, major twists. Viewers should expect to be caught completely off-guard both midway through, and at the start of the visceral third act when Caleb, Brooke, Jake and Nick suddenly realize they aren’t alone in the woods. Suffice to say, without giving away any spoilers, I literally shouted “What the fuck just happened?” when the second twist occurred.
Making a movie about the ease with which anyone can suddenly decide to target and follow someone they discover on Facebook or Instagram isn’t a new concept. Last year’s Ingrid Goes West used stalking to explore how social media can exploit both obsession and loneliness. But Followers takes time to detail specific tricks that can be used to uncover not only an individual’s home address, but their vacation plans.
Justice says he doesn’t want his movie to inspire copycats.
“It’s scary, very scary, but hopefully it will shed more light on the whole thing instead of inspire,” he says, “although inspire people to be a little more careful.”
Ironically, he’s since discovered that even talking about Followers can generate some awkward moments, often at inappropriate times.
“I don’t bring this movie up on a first date when I go out with a girl,” he says, laughing. “‘Oh, what’s your movie about?’ It’s about social media stalking. I don’t bring it up until maybe a couple of drinks in.”
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