One of the more frightening aspects of paranormal horror films is the thought that what you're watching could be real — not because of what you saw in a movie, but because of the fear that what is meant to be fiction could actually be rooted in truth.
Those frightening thoughts are what makes found footage films a good fit for the paranormal horror sub-genre. This is why decades after The Blair Witch Project popularized the story-telling device; it is still used for many films.
An example of this is the recently released Followed, which took the number one spot at the box office for several weeks. We chatted with Antoine Le, the director of the film, about what paranormal events from real-life inspired the ones in the movie, and we learned a lot!
To check out our chat with Antoine, click the podcast player below! We have also included the audio conversations with stars Sam Valentine and Matthew Solomon for additional context.
Literary Joe: I know you said a lot of paranormal stuff happened on set, but the question is, is that what you want us to see?
Antoine Le: (Laughs) Yes, yes. Yes, it is. It is. That is what I want you guys to see. I mean, I know that there are things that, you know, like, for example, one, I never wanted to show the ghost in his full glory. And that's a creative choice, because to me anyway, personally speaking, I don't get scared when I see what a ghost looks like.
So case in point, take a look at the Conjuring universe, which James Wan did; he's a master at building suspense and all that. But one thing though is that when the ghosts show up and again, I am in the minority, but when the ghosts show up, that's when I completely lost any sort of fear whatsoever, because you know, if I don't see the ghost, I hear the ghost. Or I see glimpses of it scares the heck out of me. It's like, Oh, that's what you look like, Oh man, that sucks. That's what you look like? Alright.
It's just that I'm scared of the unseen. And so that's always been my perspective. So that's why in the film, I've made it so that you can only catch glimpses of him and not full frontal reveals. That's one of them, two, is that I wanted to make it realistic in a sense. And realistic because if you look at the entire history, like real-life history, there are haunted events and all that. Never have you seen things like ghosts eating people, or like people dying, you know? The stories that scare me the most are the stories that people die in mysterious circumstances.
Case and point, in our movie, Elisa Lam. The real-life story of Elisa Lam. That scares me in the sense that we don't know what happened to her. It's called the elevator ritual or elevator game. Yeah. I would say that all you do is just Google the Cecil hotel, and boom. You can see every single thing that we mentioned in the film. Obviously, we fictionalize everything, but you know, the Elisa Lam story and all of that is what inspired the film.
And again, part of why I made it so that you could barely see the ghost is because I just think that in real life, you don't really see ghosts. All the ghost stories that you hear about, it's always about things that happened that nobody sees what happens. So I like to keep that mystery.
Literary Joe: I am curious about the lore of the Followed universe and where exactly you pull these stories from. You've already said that the elevator story is real. Are any of the other things in the movie based on real events?
Antoine Le: I would say the majority of them are. So, for example, the David Almos character, the guy with the chainsaw, the hacksaw, is based on the real-life serial killer, Richard Ramirez. He lived there back in the eighties. There's the bent-neck guy, that is an Austrian student who actually jumped and killed himself. That's why his head is bent backward.
So all of those are quote-unquote reels ripped from the headlines history of the events that we basically changed the circumstances. We just changed certain material just so that it wouldn't be identified. Part of the reason why we did it, we don't want to sensationalize the real-life character because these are tragedies. So we prefer to just pull from the headline.
So as far as the lore of the Followed universe, as we have sequels and whatnot, we will start taking things that are mysterious circumstances here and there or whatnot. We just, basically, we'll put it into our fictional universe. So yes, the majority of what you see is somewhat based on real-life events that have happened, but we just changed the entire circumstances.
So you have Elisa Lam in real life she didn't burn to death, but she basically drowned to death. That's how we basically fictionalize it in the sense that we just take real-life characters, and we just changed the name, change the circumstances. We have a story behind it.
*This interview has been edited for clarity.*
What do you guys make of these comments from director Antoine Le? Please be sure to share your thoughts with us in the usual spot!
When aspiring social media influencer “DropTheMike” is offered a lucrative sponsorship to grow his channel, he's joined by his video crew on a visit to one of the most haunted hotels in America, where he'll give his audience a horrific night of thrill-seeking the likes of which they have never seen before. What begins as a fun investigative challenge including the infamous Elevator Ritual quickly descends into a personal hell of true evil, begging the timely question: how far would you go to pursue internet fame? FOLLOWED is inspired by real events at the Hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles, and is part of a growing list of “Screen-Life” films – films whose stories are told by way of a computer screen recording. The award-winning feature is the first horror film to do so entirely through a series of YouTube-like vlogs.
Followed released on Tuesday, and you can check the film out here.