Snakes
are typically synonymous with evil or Satanism.
But in writer-director team Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage’s Them
That Follow, their purpose is for proving one’s devotion to God in this
tense Southern fried Appalachian-set thriller with an altogether different
regard for the practice of handling deadly reptiles.
Co-produced
by Gerard Butler (you read that correctly) and opening quietly in limited
release before surfacing on video, the poster suggests a devilish exercise in
carnality with the slithery serpent draped around the main character’s neck. The actual film is a rare genre picture set
in the heart of a snake-handling Pentecostal church whose dangerous ceremonial
worship comes to a head when a mass goes awry after one of the reptiles bites
and poisons a patron.
Partially
a young-adult drama involving a taboo romantic love triangle, a confrontation
with our collective fear of snakes and critique of the dangers of blind faith, Them
That Follow defies easy categorization but succeeds first and foremost as an
ensemble drama. We’re introduced to Mara
Childs (Alice Englert), the daughter of local Pentecostal pastor Lemuel (Walton
Goggins) who is pleased to see one of his fellow parishioners working to win
her affections.
Unbeknownst
to both men however, Mara is hiding a pregnancy sired by Augie (Thomas Mann),
now a ‘black sheep’ in the community after recently leaving the church. Drumming up fears and sympathies for the
snake-handling church in equal measure, the film begins slowly before erupting
into an inevitable firestorm with some of the most unnerving big-screen
encounters with snakes in recent memory.
Though
it treads the same territory of off-the-beaten-path Southern set chillers ala Two
Thousand Maniacs or Deliverance, the performances by the ensemble cast
and snake-handling Pentecostal church backdrop manage to keep it from tipping
over into archetypical redneck tropes. Walton
Goggins particularly manages to invoke our sympathy and understanding of ostensibly
a decent God-fearing man, even if his commitment to his beliefs turn a blind
eye to obvious reckless endangerment of others.
The Academy Award winning Olivia Colman turns up in a strong supporting
role as the mother of disgraced Augie alongside an unexpected dramatic
performance from standup comic Jim Gaffigan as her beleaguered husband.
The
real stars, however, are the snakes which through a combination of CGI and real
reptiles get closer to simulating what it must feel like to be draped by the creatures
than any other motion picture I’m aware of.
If you’re afraid of the creatures in general, Them That Follow won’t
do anything to ease those fears. Aided
by a hair-raising electronic soundtrack by Garth Stevenson and shot in often
claustrophobic close-ups of the snakes interspersed with widescreen panoramas of
the insular mountainous countryside, Them That Follow does an unenviable
but successful job of holding one of wild nature’s deadliest up to our faces in
such a way we’re inclined to recoil from the screen.
Them
That Follow
won’t change one’s preexisting views about snake-handling Pentecostal churches but
it doesn’t necessarily look down on those who firmly believe in the practice
either. Though the dangers and handling
of them are indeed criticized by the film, there’s a modicum of admiration for
those willing to lay their lives on the line for what is basically a
down-to-Earth belief in goodness. Right
or wrong, Them That Follow is an inspired little indie with surprisingly
more to digest thereafter than some of the wider theatrical releases of recent
weeks.
-Andrew Kotwicki
