LIKE.SHARE.FOLLOW (2017)

Studio:       Cinemax
Director:    Glenn Gers
Writer:       Glenn Gers
Producer:  Adam Hendricks, John H. Lang, Greg Gilreath
Stars:     Keiynan Lonsdale, Ema Horvath, Abraham Benrubi, Michael Boatman, Nate Hartley, Amy Pham, Remy Nozik

Review Score:

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Summary:

A young YouTube celebrity’s life takes a dramatic turn when he becomes the target of an obsessive fan.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Garrett Hoffman’s YouTube channel ‘Hoffman’s Head,’ which includes content such as amateur comedy skits and video game streams, makes him a popular online personality. While picking up his mail at a mail store, Garrett meets store clerk Shell and they take a mutual interest in one another.

Garrett questions his father, who runs a bookstore, as well as his fans about what he should do with his life after YouTube. When anonymous stream participant ‘FanGirl22’ professes her romantic interest in him, Garrett reiterates his policy to not meet or become personally involved with anyone who only knows him through his online personality.

Garrett goes on a date with Shell, after which they have sex. In the morning, Shell confesses that she is actually ‘FanGirl22’ and moved from Chicago to Fresno to be with Garrett. Alarmed by Shell’s stalker behavior, Garrett kicks her out.

Garrett discusses the situation with his friends Lyle and Kiki. Shell continues professing her love for Garrett, leaving him a voicemail about how discovering his YouTube channel saved her from suicide.

Garrett and Kiki go to a club to see Lyle perform comedy. Shell secretly follows Garrett when he leaves with a drunk woman to make sure she gets home safely. Detective Yarden later visits Garrett to question him when the woman is found dead.

With Garrett not responding to her texts, Shell seduces Lyle. Shell drugs Lyle’s drink and copies his keys to Garrett’s place while he is unconscious. Shell goes to Garrett’s place and copies files from his computer.

Feeling guilty about ignoring her, Garrett calls Shell to suggest they try again but take things slowly. Garrett comes home to find Shell waiting in his bathtub, causing him to be alarmed by her behavior once again. Shell provokes a physical struggle with Garrett during which she intentionally cuts her arm. Shell implies that she would blame Garrett for her injury if he forced her to go to the hospital. Garrett agrees to share a parting drink with Shell and ends up drugged.

When he recovers, Garrett reports Shell to Detective Yarden. Yarden says it is a case of ‘he said, she said’ and suggests Garrett simply do what he can to stay away from her.

Shell creates new online identities to try contacting Garrett, but he repeatedly blocks them. Shell interrupts one of Garrett’s video game streams to post a video professing her love for him. Shell ends up the target of shaming and parody videos from Garrett’s fans.

Detective Yarden speaks to Shell. Shell deflects him by presenting falsified emails from Garrett’s computer indicating that Garrett asked her to give up her life for him. Shell also embarrasses Garrett by publicly posting the video she secretly recorded when they had sex.

Garrett posts a video warning his fans that Shell is mentally ill. Shell has a violent emotional breakdown when she sees it.

Garrett’s father’s bookstore is torched. Garrett goes to Shell’s place to confront her, but finds that she isn’t there. Meanwhile, Shell meets a mysterious man through an online ad to purchase a crossbow from him.

Detective Yarden brings Garrett a file detailing Shell’s past history of ill mental health and suspected criminal behavior, including the disappearance of the mail store clerk whose job she took. While warning Garrett to be vigilant because of the danger Shell poses, Yarden opens Garrett’s front door. This springs a booby trap that fires an arrow into the detective’s throat.

Detective Reyes promises that the police will find Shell, initiating a nationwide manhunt. Garrett says goodbye to Kiki and heads to her Uncle Ray’s remote cabin with Lyle because it is the one place where no one would expect him to hide.

Shell checks in anonymously to a roadside motel where she binge watches Garrett’s YouTube channel. She eventually stumbles upon a video where Garrett offhandedly mentions the remote cabin in response to a question regarding where he would go in a zombie apocalypse. Shell begins uploading a video of her own before heading out to find Garrett.

After a conversation about their strained friendship, Garrett and Lyle broadcast a live stream from their undisclosed location. Shell’s video interrupts with a message proclaiming that if they cannot be united in life, she and Garrett will be united in death. Garrett tells his fans where he is in a plea for them to send help before power to the cabin is completely cut.

Lyle cowardly proposes that Garrett remain there while he goes for help. Lyle runs outside to find that the car won’t start. Lyle sees Shell with an ax and prepares to die. However, Shell ignores him and enters the cabin. Lyle flees on foot.

Shell starts a fire in the cabin. She and Garrett fight until Garrett breaks her arm and she stabs him. Garrett hits Shell in the head with a fireplace poker and she drops dead on the floor. Garrett collapses from his wound.

Garrett is woken in the morning by his fan ‘PetuniaForever,’ who responded to his plea and drove to his rescue. Petunia puts Garrett in her car and drives away. Lyle unknowingly passes them on the road as he heads back to the cabin with police. Garrett is horrified when he realizes Petunia is another obsessed fan who plans to treat Garrett herself and keep him captive.

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Review:

“I used to be ‘with it.’  But then they changed what ‘it’ was.  Now what I’m ‘with’ isn’t ‘it.’  And what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me.  It’ll happen to you!”  I laughed when Grandpa Simpson said these classic lines in 1996.  I wasn’t even able to legally buy beer yet, still completely incapable of conceiving any scenario where popular culture could possibly seem alien to me.

20+ years later, I now see that scene from Grandpa’s prophetic perspective instead of young Homer’s dismissal of a dad who doesn’t understand.  Nothing has made me feel more out of touch with contemporary entertainment evolution than the rise in popularity of YouTube celebrities, which is a concept I cannot wrap my 80s-raised head around.

I’ve watched PewDiePie shriek at his PlayStation only to wonder, “why don’t viewers just play these games for themselves?”  While looking into online personality Kian Lawley for his acting turn in “The Chosen” (review here), I could only stand a few seconds of an impromptu rap about drinking his urine before asking, “wait, how many millions of viewers subscribe to this kid’s channels?”

Another review remarked that “Like.Share.Follow” lead Keiynan Lonsdale and his character Garrett, a YouTube star, are unconvincingly flat and his videos are insipidly annoying.  I counter that I’ve found the same holds true of actual online personalities.  Lonsdale is charming enough, I think.  Then again, I don’t understand what makes a social media personality appealing in the first place, so take my opinion as that of an uninformed man.  As my experience goes, “Like.Share.Follow” feels right on target in its take on that wacky world.

A young YouTube celebrity dealing with the pressures of fawning fans isn’t the most relatable protagonist for a cautionary tale about online stranger danger in escapist entertainment form.  Nevertheless, the underlying concept of an obsessive stalker taking infatuation to homicidal extremes, as well as the notion that intimate details of anyone’s personal life are at constant risk of electronic exposure, drives “Like.Share.Follow” into timely terrain that is uncomfortably scary for anyone.

That’s the new pressure facing Garrett when an anonymous admirer takes physical form as Shell, short for Michelle.  Shell used subterfuge to work her way around Garrett’s rule about no personal relationships with fans.  After tricking him into a date and then having sex, Shell tells the truth, prompting Garrett to rightly give her the heave ho.  Now she won’t leave him alone.  A bad situation becomes worse when, well, you can see where it’s going from here.

“Like.Share.Follow” doesn’t have any real layers.  One scene leads directly into the next.  Yet for this kind of movie, uncomplicated is okay, even preferred.

While watching “Like.Share.Follow,” I felt as though the film had a Blumhouse teen thriller aesthetic only to find out after the fact that Blumhouse indeed had a hand in its production.  That’s either a good or a not so good thing depending on how you feel about fare such as “Unfriended” (review here) or “The Gallows” (review here) where photogenic people take precedence over mold-breaking fiction.

Writer/director Glenn Gers cops to the obvious, which is that “Like.Share.Follow” essentially remakes “Fatal Attraction” for millennials.  Gers is much closer in age to myself than either of us are to the characters.  Perhaps that’s why his take on social media culture, adapted from what his son introduced him to, seems straight to me when I can’t speak with certainty to how it hits the demographic depicted onscreen.

Dialogue doesn’t shoot for Diablo Cody levels of perfectly worded witticisms, though it still reads as real conversations amongst 21st-century teens.  The film stuffs in things like one girl in a plush stuffed animal head hat and another in a necklace that spells ‘dork’ with Scrabble tiles for a slight touch of obnoxious New Age hipsterness.  It’s the right amount to appear authentic without trying too hard only to look like what fiftysomethings think 2017 looks like for twentysomethings.

“Like.Share.Follow” is formulaic, yes.  But its personalities push it through pedestrian bits.  Complementing Keiynan Lonsdale’s even-keeled charisma is Ema Horvath as Shell.  Horvath fills a routine role, yet still works in wedges of seductive siren, girl-next-door cuteness, and dangerously unhinged sociopath as required.  Shell, Garrett, and his friends are all characters we’ve seen many times over, though an engaging cast freshens their faces.

Aside from one over-the-top booby trap, “Like.Share.Follow” remains relatively grounded in “this could actually happen” territory.  At least until it arrives at a laughably impossible ending.  The guilty pleasure truth about the final scene however is that the serendipitous staging is so sinisterly silly, it peaks right past preposterousness to become wickedly snicker-worthy in a highly satisfying way.

If I wanted to add a clichéd backhand compliment, I’d cynically say that “Like.Share.Follow” is more entertaining that its recycled premise has any right to be.  Three out of four stars might be a “for what it is” rating, but for the PG-13 thriller with straightforward style that it is, “Like.Share.Follow” knows how to sharply stick to a tried-and-true plan.

Review Score:  75

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