Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 38 minutes
Director: Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage
Quick Impressions:
As the end credits ran, I turned to my husband and observed, “I feel like these people could solve a lot of their problems if they would just quit picking up rattlesnakes.” I stand by that statement.
Since I’m a big Cate Blanchett fan, I had planned to see Where’d You Go, Bernadette? this Thursday. But then I remembered my sister is coming to town, so I moved date night to Tuesday and talked my husband into seeing this atmospheric independent film about Appalachian snake handlers.
Them That Follow was never even on my radar until my plans got derailed, but it has a really compelling, slithery trailer, that made my ten-year-old daughter extremely disappointed she wasn’t invited to the movie. Plus, a short description is all but irresistible. Listen to these compelling fragments. Olivia Colman. Walton Goggins. Kaitlyn Dever. A secluded sect of snake handlers in rural Appalachia. The pastor’s daughter on the verge of marriage. A secret that could tear the community apart. Wouldn’t you buy a ticket to that? I can’t believe we were the only people in the auditorium. (Literally.)
Now, is the movie extremely boring? Yes. The trailer is far more compelling than the actual film, I must admit. But I’m not sorry I saw Them That Follow. It is intensely atmospheric and effectively immersive. Plus it takes a surprising and refreshing approach to the material and does not demonize (or even sensationalize) the snake handlers. Making them appear sinister and corrupt would be all too easy, but this film offers a kinder, more nuanced look at the religious community. I found its treatment of Walton Goggins’s charismatic pastor almost shockingly sympathetic. He leads a fringe group for sure, and their particular brand of theology might arguably be psychologically harmful (and is most definitely physically harmful), but they are sincere people with real faith seeking genuine spiritual connection. Taking cheap shots at this odd group would be all too easy, but that’s not what this movie does. I’ve got to respect it for that. Plus, obviously, the performances are great.
The Good:
Them That Follow is so richly atmospheric and deeply immersive that after watching it, I felt like I spent my summer vacation living on “the mountain” with Lemuel’s congregation. (I love that Walton Goggins’s character is named Lemuel, by the way. Who can help but think of Gulliver’s Travels, as we go onto a journey into this strange new world?)
The story builds slowly, but that’s by design to give the rich atmosphere time to envelop us. This film is like an online dating profile that gradually takes a scary turn. Do you like long walks through the autumn leaves, relaxing by a slow-running stream, wading into a placid creek, becoming filled with the spirit and showing your devotion to the Lord by picking up rattlesnakes with your bare hands and letting them crawl all over your body?
The film advances slowly (very slowly) with careful, thorough world building. At first glance, this looks like the real world, our world. But it isn’t. Out in the embrace of tranquil nature, the congregants on the mountain live in their own reality. The longer the film goes on, the more thoroughly we understand that reality from the inside.
The cinematography, by the way, is amazing. These scenes of nature are revealed to us in rich color with captivating, inventive framing. Cinematographer Brett Jutkiewicz deserves commendation for providing one of the strongest elements of the film. We can’t help basking in the beauty of the characters’ surroundings and following Pastor Lemuel’s advice to listen for God in nature because the score is unobtrusive. In fact, it’s rarely there. Normally we hear nothing but the hum of the natural world all around…just like the characters.
They’re all compelling, well drawn characters (though I do wish the protagonist verbalized her inner thoughts a bit more). Watching this film feels a lot like reading a short story. The plot is pretty simple. It could probably be told in ten pages, maybe twenty. In fact, it sort of reminds me of Faulkner’s “The Bear,” a piece of fiction I found mystifying and perplexing in high school. At the end of “The Bear,” the boy has become a man. Them That Follow shows us how the pastor’s daughter Mara (Alice Englert) becomes a woman. We are quietly shown her life from her point of view, and before long, we begin to understand her (or at least the tension that she feels as she struggles to reconcile incongruous elements of her identity. She has faith, but she also has a growing issue.)
A soaring strength of the film is its portrayal of how faith affects the psyche. I can’t think of a more elegant way to say that. In one scene, another character speaks dismissively of Mara’s father’s faith, and she answers emphatically that it is her faith, too. This idea resonated really strongly with me, and soon I was filling in Mara’s silences with echoes of my own inner demons. Snake handling is a fairly extreme expression of religious belief, but you can easily view it as a metaphor for faith of any kind (faith in God, devotion to tradition, adherence to a particular way of life). Even when this faith interferes with your plans, goes against your instincts, complicates your future, you can’t just cut it out of your life, not without losing something, a part of yourself. Wouldn’t these people’s lives be one hundred percent easier if they didn’t have to handle snakes? Well yes. But they’re snake handlers. Adherence to any ideology creates its own problems, but it also gives adherents an identity, a place.
Atheists perhaps watch a story like this and say, “Yes, this illustrates the problem with religion. Look how miserable this religion is making these people. It is causing them legal problems, jeopardizing their livelihoods and health, and it’s definitely doing psychological damage. The answers this girl is searching for are so simple, but being brainwashed by this religion is clouding her judgment.”
Atheists must be thinking this. I mean, I’m a theist, and that’s what I’m thinking! I’m not a snake handler, but let’s be honest. It’s all snake handling if you don’t believe in it. Theism is extremely weird from the outside, and all faith traditions sound crazy when scrutinized by non-believers. Them That Follow definitely highlights the unwelcome complexity religion can introduce to a person’s life. Yet at the same time, Mara does not renounce her faith, and the film does not truly condemn it. In fact, there’s an almost miraculous element to the ending.
I’d love to see the story told from Lemuel’s point of view. What does he make of what ultimately unfolds? I need to know this. Mara does not talk much (probably because she cannot safely confide in anyone and is often discouraged from expressing her true inner thoughts). She’s certainly in a very restrictive environment and seems to lack a script for articulating and negotiating the (actually fairly mundane) problem that occupies all her thoughts.
Not surprisingly, Mara’s silence brings her the attention of a suitor who rhapsodizes about her purity and seemingly just can’t wait to project his conception of the ideal woman on her, as if she’s a convenient movie screen. (This suitor is gamely played by an increasingly sinister Lewis Pullman who looked so familiar to us. I said afterwards, “He looked like an evil Spider-Man.” “Yes!” my husband cried. “He sometimes looked like Tobey Maguire.” We couldn’t figure out why he looked so familiar, but now I know he’s Bill Pullman’s son, so his familiar facial features make sense.) In a move that is surely well known by most quiet girls, Garret falls in love with Mara even though she rarely speaks to him because he assumes every positive thing he imagines is true about her. (I personally have encountered so many people like this that I was waiting from the start for this genial, obliging fellow to take a dark turn. I distrusted him immediately. He has this cringey, “You’re so pure!” line, and I wanted to yell, “Yeah, why don’t you marry a bar of soap! This is a human woman.” Weirdly, at the same time, I felt terribly, terribly sorry for Garret who is making a severe error of judgment and allowing himself to be taken advantage of by this family.)
But like Garret, I also found that Mara’s taciturn nature made it easier for me to fill in her silences with my own inner voice. I kept imagining her life through the lens of my own experiences and struggles. This worked pretty well for me because I did grow up in a more religious than average household, and I’ve also had to wrestle with the incongruity of my stated beliefs and actual behavior. I’m not sure how well it would work for others. The movie is slow, but it certainly manages to get its point across.
The cast is fantastic. Best is Olivia Colman, but a close second is Kaitlyn Dever, as Dilly (who really seems like she belongs in The Crucible). Both of these female supporting characters have such intricate, interesting, largely untold stories. I found myself wanting to know more about both of them, and I loved and longed for all of their moments on screen. Walton Goggins is great, too.
Best Action Sequence:
From the intensely slithery preview, you would assume there would be lots of snake-on-snake-on-congregant action in this film, but there’s really not that much. I expected far more snaked up worship scenes. Instead, we get a lot of stage whispers about snakely doings and trouble with the law. That’s not as exciting, but it’s probably realistic. If I were a police officer and a community near me kept “accidentally” killing people with rattlesnake bites, I’d investigate. (How can this be good for their congregation? There are only like twenty-five people who live on that mountain!)
Anyway, I actually love a late action scene that doesn’t involve snakes at all (at least not literally). It begins when Walton Goggins’s Lemuel finds something unexpected in the kitchen.
Best Scene:
The film’s very best scene is the final encounter between Mara and her father. I won’t spoil it.
Best Scene Visually:
As I’ve said, visuals are where the film excels. Not only do we get spectacular nature scenes, but the gritty details of the characters’ homes and vehicles feel so real, so specific, so grimy and tangible and alive that they could have been written by Charles Dickens.
There’s a lovely scene where Walton Goggins heals a boy in front of the creek, and a haunting moment in yellow leaves with Dilly. (My husband actually called out that last scene as the visual standout of the film for him, too. He described it more eloquently as “the distance shot after they picked up Dilly from her place…the travel trailer surrounded by those beautiful, yellow leafed, straight trees.” I really liked Dilly, in general. In fact, I wish the movie were about Dilly instead. They could call it Dilly: The Replacement Daughter–She Cooks! She Cleans! She Talks! (Granted the title might need some workshopping.)
The Negatives:
Mara is not very interesting. I do wonder if this is because Alice Englert is outshone by her flashier co-stars. Olivia Colman, of course, gives an excellent performance and plays a fascinating character. Colman is just playing a supporting role, but sometimes you can win Best Actress that way. All joking aside, Colman really is in a supporting role here. (Also, I’m thrilled that she won for The Favourite. I loved the film and thought she was amazing in it.) There’s no way to argue that her character is the lead here, though. But both the character and the performance are far more interesting than Englert’s Mara.
Second in the end credits is Kaitlyn Dever (the anatomically bemused best friend from Booksmart), who plays another (even less ancillary) supporting character, Dilly. But Dilly is more interesting than Mara, too. Again, this may be in part because Dever is simply more interesting to watch on screen, but I honestly think Mara’s character is a bit dull as written.
Guess who else is more interesting than Mara? Walton Goggins! (Is this because the film wants to show us that Mara is not allowed to flourish in her restrictive environment, though? I realize that she can’t exactly run around confiding in people. Living on the mountain is a lot like living in The Crucible.) I am downright fascinated by what the ending of the story means to this man.
I think I would rather watch a movie from the point of view of any one of these other characters I have named. But that would seem to further silence a character who has already been so silenced by circumstance. Maybe I personally just don’t do well with non-verbal protagonists. (Mara can talk, to be clear. She just doesn’t open up very often, which proves to be sound judgment on her part.) I don’t know. Everybody is so fascinated by this girl, and I just don’t see it. Honestly, her faith is one of the most amazing things about her, and I find myself wishing we saw more of this. Mara is quite remarkable. But we really only catch a glimpse of this side of her at the very beginning and the very end.
I enjoyed this movie, but I would be lying if I didn’t disclose that it is almost painfully slow. And quiet. This is not something you’d ever watch and complain, “Wow that was so overproduced!” By the end, my ears were ringing from the lack of sound.
I also find myself wishing I knew more about snake handlers. Surely not all of them behave in quite this way. Speaking in tongues and picking up snakes, while odd, is a scriptural(ly inspired) form of Christian worship. But in this particular congregation, the emphasis is far more on the snakes than on Christ. This community appears to fetishize these snakes, and they have a puzzling predilection for the lethal ones. Why must people prove they have the spirit by picking up rattlesnakes and surviving bites? This is supposed to be Sunday worship, not the Salem Witch Trials! I guess you shouldn’t lie about having the spirit. But if you do, the penalty is death? That seems counterproductive. Wouldn’t it be better to receive medical treatment, attend a Bible study, pray for discernment, and try again? I find myself suspecting that these people on the mountain are a tiny splinter group, broken off from a somewhat larger fringe movement.
The pastor is always lamenting about the police persecuting them. Why do the police persecute and look down on them? The pragmatist in me wants to yell, “Maybe you should stop throwing rattlesnakes on people.” Couldn’t they just use less deadly snakes? (I’m not a snake expert, but surely, just like with spiders, there are some venomous snakes that are not quite as deadly as the others!) (And what’s up with all the spider imagery, by the way?)
Nothing happens in this movie until the last fifteen minutes, when suddenly EVERYTHING happens. (I guess that’s how it works when you pick up a rattlesnake, too, so I’ll acknowledge that the story’s structure mirrors its content.) Them That Follow winds and unwinds and coils and slithers around you ever so slowly, and then suddenly, it strikes. The last fifteen minutes are pretty intense. (Still, the ending is not entirely unexpected.) Some of the stuff that happens is pretty intense, possibly a bit contrived, but it’s the best part of the movie, so I guess I won’t complain.
Probably the most surprising thing about this film to me is that Jim Gaffigan is in it, and he acquits himself very well in a totally serious, dramatic role. (He’s actually integral in one scene with the greatest potential to become over-the-top and unintentionally comedic, too, but that never happens. I mention this because I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jim Gaffigan in a movie. I thought he only did stand-up! Clearly I need to broaden my horizons.)
Overall:
Them That Follow is extremely slow, and for a movie about snake-handling, it’s a little light on snake-handling. But it certainly does not lack bite. If you hold a rattlesnake long enough, chances are, it’s going to spring suddenly and bite you. And this movie is like that, too. It has an extremely eventful ending and such a good supporting cast (talented actors, fascinating characters) that you wish any one of them were the lead instead. I’m not sorry I saw this movie. I’ve enjoyed thinking about it. The atmosphere alone is amazing, worth the price of a ticket, and the take on faith is kind of refreshing in its complexity. But until the last fifteen minutes, nothing happens. Nothing. So if you see this movie and find it boring, remember what I told you. I do wonder, though, if they did their own stunts.
