Wednesday, August 7, 2019
YOUNGSTOWN
The cast of “Them That Follow” seems a lot more impressive today than it did in 2017, when it was being shot in rural areas near Lisbon and Salem.
And starting Friday, Mahoning Valley audiences can get their first look at the film. “Follow” opens in theaters nationwide that day, including Cinema South in Boardman.
While the modest-budget film has drawn mixed reviews – it drew a critics’ score of 63 percent on rottentomatoes.com – it earned high praise from some influential sources.
Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan called it “an ambitious and impressive independent production, where the creation of mood and place is so convincing it enables us to buy into a richly melodramatic plot about a taboo romance.”
“Follow” premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and also was screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival.
The first feature-film project by writer-director team Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage, “Follow” is set in present-day Appalachia among an isolated snake-handling congregation of devout Pentecostals.
It tells the story of a pastor’s daughter who is promised to marry a young man in their faith. Conflict arises when her relationship with a nonbeliever comes to light.
“Follow” offers a glimpse into the rarely seen world of those who handle poisonous snakes to demonstrate their faith in God.
Read more about the film in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.