Girl Followed (2017) User Reviews

How NOT to raise kids...

[vnssyndrome89 · 4/10 · 27 September 2023]

GIRL FOLLOWED (TV Movie 2017) 4 out of 10 stars Time to Read: 3:24 min

BASIC PLOT: Regan Lindstrom (Emma Fuhrmann) is having a tough freshman year. She's fourteen, naive about the way things work, and trying hard to fit in. Her best friend Sabine (Olivia Nikkanen), isn't really her friend at all, and keeps Regan around only to feel better about herself. At home, things aren't any better. Her parents, Abby (Heather McComb) and Jim (Joey Lawrence) favor her sister Taylor (Gianna LePera), and this has left Regan with very little self-esteem. Her immaturity, her isolation, and her self loathing has left her vulnerable to a predator in her midst. Nate (Travis Caldwell) is a medical tech, working at her mother's doctor's office. He seems nice enough, he shares her interests, and says he understands her problems, but his help often crosses appropriate boundaries. Can Regan's family finally hear her cries for help, in time to save her from Nate's predatory clutches?

WHAT WORKS: *REGAN'S SISTER IS AN A$$, AND THE PARENTS DO FAVOR HER Wow! Regan (Emma Fuhrmann) is right! Her sister, Taylor (Gianna LePera), is a selfish b*tch, and the parents do prefer her over Regan! Taylor isn't worried about her sister at all, she just cares how Regan's problems affects her, and the parents don't discourage this egocentric behavior. Regan's what we call the "Identified Patient," or IP. When there's something wrong with the family dynamic, the sanest family member rebells against the dysfunction, often by acting out in some way (drugs, violence, alcohol or sex). The problem is, the acting out is often harmful to the IP. The parents say to Regan, it's her mistake alone, but when your child fails like this, it's never their mistake alone. The parents favoring one child over the other, destroyed Regan's self-esteem, and forced her to look elsewhere for approval. It's good to see plotlines that mirror actual family problems, albeit, in a simplified way (this is a melodrama after all).

*THE CINEMATOGRAPHY/DIRECTING IS BETTER THAN MOST The shots, are mostly set up in a good way, and the visual storytelling is efficacious. A few are too close, but for the most part, you could storyboard the movie with individual shots, and that means it's a successful outing from Carole McClintock (cinematographer) and Tom Shell (director).

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: *NO FOURTEEN YEAR OLD IS THAT NAIVE No kid in this day and age is that sheltered, especially with an older sibling. The "obscene" pictures Regan sends out, are simply her in a bra and panties, which is pretty tame in 2017.

*REGAN'S QUESTIONS AND FEELINGS ARE MORE INLINE WITH SOMEONE YOUNGER I know that in our politically correct society, it wouldn't be ok to make Regan twelve, which is how she acts, but it would have made for a better movie. Having Regan be so naive at fourteen, is just not believable in the current environment. Her inexperience with sex, the way she asks Nate (Travis Caldwell) if she's pretty, all speak to someone younger, with a dysfunctional relationship with their family. Her parents refuse to take any responsibility, putting her upbringing back on her, which is pretty stressful for a twelve, or a fourteen year old.

*NATE SHOULD ALTER THE LINDSTROM'S MEDICAL INSURANCE, OR EASIER, NATE COULD JUST KILL THE COUNSELOR If the plot device is - 'Nate doesn't want Regan to see a counselor, because their relationship might be exposed', there are w-a-a-a-y easier paths to get there. Nate is a medical billing expert, he could easily tamper with the family's health insurance (show him clicking a box that would cancel the family's mental health coverage). If I'm confused about Nate's motivations (and I am), it's a fail. If it takes to long to complete the task (getting rid of the parents insurance, by sabotaging both parents jobs), it's a fail. Also, no ephebophile is going to expose his relationship needlessly, but sending the pictures to Jim's boss, does just that. Melissa Cassera, Christine Conradt and Chris Lancey really should have rethought this entire plot device.

*SCREWING WITH THE DAD'S JOB IS A BAD PLOT DEVICE No one would be fired because their young daughter was taken advantage of on the Internet. That is the STUPIDEST plot device ever! "We're firing you, or denying your promotion, because your daughter was the victim of a ephebophile." Also, the boss receiving pictures of a fourteen year old in her underwear, and opening them on his work computer, is outrageous. It's more damaging than Jim's (Joey Lawrence) fourteen year old daughter being groomed by a ephebophile. In reality, the boss might be fired or reprimanded, not Jim, her father.

*NEVER ADDRESSING THE BAD PARENTING IS A PROBLEM The family is suddenly 'healed', without the counseling they so desperately needed. Unfortunately, trauma (such as Regan's abduction) does not heal the underlying family problems that are abundant here. I'd rather hear they're going on a family vacation, to celebrate their successful completion of family therapy.

*BUSINESSES ARE TRAINED NOT TO OPEN ATTACHMENTS FROM EMAILS THEY DON'T RECOGNIZE Mr. Howard, Jim's boss, says everyone up the chain, "Got photos of your daughter from an unknown email." That means, the entire staff, opened, what could be construed as child porn, from an anonymous email address. They ALL opened the attachments, and we're supposed to believe they all still have their jobs? They work at a youth center for pity's sake! I expect more from Christine Conradt, her storylines don't usually have plot holes big enough for the whole movie to fall into.

*CONFIDENTIALITY APPLIES ALL THE TIME Detective White (Laura Kai Chen) tells Jim, "This is a child abduction case, so confidentiality doesn't apply." That's the biggest bunch of BS I've ever heard! They'd need a court order to lift confidentiality. No psychologist/psychiatrist would risk their license, and future, because some cop tells them too. It's asinine!

*THE TRAILER IS STUPID The trailer is a disjointed jumble, never capturing the ideas of the movie in it's entirety. Also, the voiceover artist starts out sounding like he's inveigling people into buying time shares, only at the end, does he use his "thriller" voice.

*THE COVER ART IS RIDICULOUS! It has nothing to do with the movie, and looks like it took about ten minutes to create. Come on guys, I could do better with my phone!

TO RECOMMEND, OR NOT TO RECOMMEND, THAT IS THE QUESTION: *That's a hard question. If you enjoy low budget family dysfunction, teenage angst, or Joey Lawrence, you MIGHT enjoy this. I understand and appreciate melodramas, and this is right on the line of watchable. 4 out of 10

CLOSING NOTES: *This is a made-for-tv movie, please keep that in mind before you watch\rate it. TV movies have a much lower budget, and so your expectations should be adjusted.

*I have no connection to the film, or production in ANY way. This review was NOT written in ANY way by a bot. I am just an honest viewer, who wishes for more straight forward reviews, and better entertainment. Hope I helped you out. I do have a background in psychology, hope the review is not too technical.

Christine Conradt should have written it solo

[mgconlan-1 · 4/10 · 9 April 2017]

The first of the three films Lifetime showed from 6 p.m. to midnight April 8 was "Girl Followed," an obvious pun on "Girl, Interrupted" but really a pretty conventional Lifetime tale of a young woman being the target of obsessive stalking and sabotage from a somewhat older man. This time around the girl was 14-year-old Regan Lindstrom (Emma Fuhrmann), who simply can't catch a break. Her parents Jim (Joey Lawrence) and Abby (Heather McComb) spy on her constantly and treat her with all the sensitivity and love of concentration-camp commandants. This is one of those stories in which the parents are so good at keeping tabs on their kids (not only Regan but her older sister Taylor, played by Gianna LaPera) one wonders why they don't make some real money with these skills by working for the CIA or NSA. They're particularly down on any boy she expresses even the slightest romantic interest in, and so of course Regan rebels at the earliest opportunity. When her crush object Austin (Jake Elliott) breaks up with her and goes with her cuter and richer best friend Sabine (Olivia Nikkanen) instead, Sabine tells Regan her secret was she sent Austin selfies of her in her underwear, and if she wants to get him back Regan should do the same. She does so, and Sabine critiques the photos, saying that she looks good in red (her bra was red) but she needs sexier undies to strike lust in the heart of her chosen male.

Accordingly, on a shopping trip for clothes with her mom, Regan shoplifts a hot, sexy bra and panties — we get the impression it's less because the family can't afford them and more because mom would never buy things like that for her in a million years — and her new set of sexted selfies gets spread all over the school and instantly earns her a reputation as a slut. Meanwhile, Regan frequently visits mom, who works as a nurse, at her hospital, where one of mom's duties is giving out tests and treatments for STD's (which may be offered by the writers, Christine Conradt, Chris Lancey and Melissa Cacera, as an explanation for why she's so otherwise inexplicably overprotective of Regan: she sees young people coming in with the wages of sexual experimentation every day!) — and she's attracted the lascivious attentions of Nate (Travis Caldwell), the STD clinic's 22-year-old receptionist. Nate is a young man who doesn't need to work — he lives in a big house and is pretty much alone because his super-rich parents spend most of their time on vacation (indeed, I recognized the house from a previous Lifetime movie, though I can't remember right now which one) — and he's also a suspect in the mysterious disappearance of Lana, another teenage girl from the same town.

Of course the moment we see Travis Caldwell, who's tall, dark-haired, baby-faced and drop-dead gorgeous, we know he's going to be the sinister stalker who's going to menace Our Heroine — and indeed he does, though he ramps up his campaign of revenge or obsession or whatever to attack her parents as well. Conradt's presence hints at a more interesting movie than the one that got made, and if she had been in charge of the whole project instead of just co-writing an "original" (quotes definitely appropriate!) story that got turned into a script by a third scribe, she probably would have made Nate a more complex character and given at least a hint of what made him "run." Alas, Nate got depicted as your typical generic Lifetime sex-crazed maniac who gets progressively crazier as the film goes on. Also, Conradt, Lancey and Cacera offered no clue about how Abby would have reacted when she realized that the mysterious figure menacing her daughter was someone she worked with and therefore knew well and trusted. But the real person who screwed up this movie wasn't any of the writers, nor was it director Tom Shell (who did a perfectly workmanlike, though far from great, job with it), but the casting director, Mary Jo Slater. First of all, though Heather McComb and Emma Fuhrmann look enough alike to be believable as coming from the same family, McComb is young enough she looks more like Fuhrmann's older sister than her mom — and Joey Lawrence looks even younger. Lawrence has got a hot, blond, butch male bod and certainly could give Travis Caldwell competition in the looks department (too bad the writers gave him a character whose virtually only emotion is blustering anger, hardly the stuff to evoke the sexual fantasies I'd probably be having about Lawrence if I got to see him in a different sort of role), but he and McComb simply don't look old enough to have two teenage daughters. And what's more, the actress actually playing Regan's older sister, Gianna LaPera, is blonde, has curly hair and a different body type from Fuhrmann's — though maybe we were supposed to think Regan took after her mom and Taylor her dad, looks-wise. Girl Followed is a pretty generic Lifetime thriller, not all that bad but not transcendent either — though it might have been considerably better if Conradt had got to write it solo — with nice-looking people of both (mainstream) genders enacting a pretty stupid story that offers the usual Lifetime formulae but nothing more than that.

Wooden Script is All Too Predictable

[lavatch · 6/10 · 21 January 2019]

The title "Girl Followed" does not accurately convey the gist of this Lifetime Channel potboiler. A more accurat title would be "The Male Secretary is a Psychopath."

It is a credit to the actors in this film that they were able to stand up and deliver their lines without breaking into laughter. While the dialogue was well-written, the situations were invariably incredulous. For example, how could the perceptive mother Abby not recognize that the male secretary in her medical office was flirting with her daughter? How could young Regan not know that it is verboten to shoplift, send out racy selfies, and sneak out at night to meet Nate in the park?

These jaw-dropping moments were filmed with solid production values. The locations around L.A. were interesting in establishing an environment for a coterie of elitists that has no concern about money. Nate's parents and millionaires and he drives a Mercedes while holding down his job as a male secretary. Jim and Abby can afford to purchase a new car for their daughter Taylor's sixteenth birthday. With Jim's promotion as an administrator at a community center and Abby's salary as a nurse, they are able to maintain a luxurious home in an exclusive area of L.A. and pay for a vacation in the Bahamas. The major premises of the characters and their lives were simply not believable.

All of the high school students in film appeared to be played by actors far too old their roles. Even Nate looked older than 22. (The actor playing the role was apparently 28 at the time of filming.) Those casting issues could be forgiven if the story was truly gripping. Instead, the film was a by-the-numbers treatment of a psychopath, who cleverly uses the internet, social media, and other technology for his devious purposes. With Nate's ability to nearly ruin the careers of both Abby and Jim and skillfully prey upon their daughter, the film does offer a valid warning about the dangers of the internet at a time when we are losing more and more of what was formerly known as "privacy." In this regard, the film is worth watching.

A story that doesn't hold up.

[psychassist · 3/10 · 17 April 2017]

So the movie opens with an abduction of someone named Tara and then the bad guy for some unexplained reason changes his entire MO to stalking and falling for a 14 yo. At the end we find out in one sentence "...Tara is OK...Where the heck was she the entire show that now she is OK?? No explanation at all. Dumb.

Is the father a puppet or a non-method actor?

[donnagray519 · 1/10 · 21 December 2017]

I've never seen worse acting. The so-called actor playing the father is capable of two expressions. The mother is also wooden but at least can eke out three different faces. If their daughters are breathing, walking, eating, the parents reaction is "Oh my God! They're gonna implode! The 5.5 big one is gonna swallow them up!" Dreadful movie and complete waste of time.

Save yourselves viewers and run for the hills.

That escalated quickly 😏

[kessiebear-24936 · 1/10 · 5 October 2021]

Terrible script, terrible acting.. just terrible..

Just don't lol.

Potential warning about predatory relationships

[phd_travel · 5/10 · 6 September 2017]

This movie should serve as a warning about an older guy going after a 14 year old girl. But somehow the actor they chose doesn't look old enough and the girl not naive and young enough so they look more like a possible couple than a predatory relationship. Joey Lawrence doesn't quite convince as Dad. A 14 year old girl falls for some male nurse colleague of her mother's. They form an illicit relationship and of course the girl is super irritating.

It's an okay watch but would have been better with more appropriate casting.

same old story

[skylarnicole-25131 · 1/10 · 3 April 2017]

This movie is awful, nothing good about it. Same old tale and nothing new. Regan tries to get the attention of someone she knew at school and it escalated. People called her names and it spread to the school when she took a sexual picture of herself. the acting was a minus 10. the movie started out boring and ended boring. How many times are you going to do the psycho guy leaks pictures to everyone on campus and everyone her father works with? Oh come on... its so stupid and lame!the so called best friend of Regan believed the sexual rumors and began dating one of the popular boys in school and Regan was shunned and transferred to a new school. all in all, worst I've ever seen.

How many times can you re write it? come on and get a new script. Bad cast, bad script.

Omg lol what a mess up!!

[BreakingBottles · 10/10 · 23 January 2019]

Joey Lawrence tripped up at the end of the movie. His daughter, the main one, is named Regan. With just 1:26 minutes left in the movie he says The most important thing is Tara is safe. Tara was the girl who was kidnapped in the opening scene.

Serious subject matter with laughable acting

[burgerman93 · 2/10 · 12 March 2023]

This objectively was a crash and burn movie, but I couldn't resist finishing since it was so illogical and unnatural. None of the actors have a chance here with this convoluted script. Also, the music and sound effects tend to overpower any of the dialogue.

The father character is especially wooden and over the top- I couldn't help but laugh at his angry moments and poor decision making (he eventually becomes the executive director at his company, in an ironic twist of fate).

There was an abundance of errors but the one detail that stood out is the 22 year old Nate's car. This creep drove to the main character's home, and yet neither the mom or dad had the wits about them to get the license plate or call in a description of the car to the detective. And he later kidnapped the daughter in broad daylight while the mom huffed and puffed trying to chase him, and yet when she got to Nate's home, I guess she didn't see his car parked outside the mansion. That might have given her a good clue to not enter the home. What is it with characters going to the suspect's house without any police backup?

So yeah this was a train wreck of a movie to kill time on a Saturday night, but at least I got some laughs out of it. Moral of the story: don't give your teenage daughter unrestricted use of a smart phone.

Bad

[devinbrown-19091 · 1/10 · 16 May 2023]

Piss poor excuse for a movie. It's disgusting as well because of the grown man that's into a freaking child. But the real criticism.

It wants you to believe later that the guy is the same guy from the begin but it's a completely different actor with short hair and a clearly middle aged dude where is the creep is young 20's. They both drive a black Mercedes van so that want to you to think it's the same guy but the plates are different. At the end of the film the dad forgets his own daughter name and accidentally calls her Tara when her name is Reagan and they just like. Left that in the film? Unless it was just trying to give you closure so you know the girl in the beginning was also safe? They did shove a bunch of expeditions into the last 5 minutes.

"Wow you are doing math I did last week" "I like my new school" "Hey by the way here is my new promotion check from my job" "We have been through a lot" "At least Tara us safe" "Let's go to the Bahamas"

Just wtf lol. It's like they had to cut some stuff out or something but they still wanted people to know so they shaved that all on.

Acting was sub par except the kids. I thought their acting was alright.

When the daughter was missing the dad says with no emotion but just louder.

"Listen detective, this is my daughter here"

Just Jesus. Not everyone deserves to make a movie.

Lesson to teenage girls

[drjanetius · 9/10 · 9 November 2018]

The movie pictures the adolescent rebellion of the young girl and the unsupervised psychopathic young man who manipulates the situation. Parental supervision of teen girl (Regan) though looks over protective, is not normal concern of the loving parents. How psychologist helps in identifying the psycho boy friend is also a good move. I liked it. It is a lesson to teenage girls to be watchful.

Whoa! Joey Lawrence and All-Star Cast Drive Good-Girl-Gone-Bad Thriller!

[johnnyhightest · 8/10 · 8 April 2017]

But seriously, I'll admit I watched this primarily for Joey Lawrence and Heather McComb, but it had me hooked as an effectively graphic example of how young girls can be led astray by seemingly harmless adult figures and how their parents can try to keep them in line.

While I loved the usual Lifetime movie last-10-minute-battle-to-the- death showdown, I also appreciated the solid performances put in by Joey Lawrence and Heather McComb as the tormented parents, as well as creepy guy Nate (Travis Caldwell), big-hearted sister Taylor (Gianna LePera) and good-girl-almost-gone-bad Regan (Emma Fuhrmann).

I know this is a subject done over many times on channels like Lifetime, but it can never get enough attention.

For what it's worth, there are a couple videos online showing real teen girls meeting up with an older guy posing as a teen as a very serious teaching model for parents. If they are at all real, they are pretty chilling.

Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jMhMVEjEQg

Suspenseful and pretty scary look into predators

[swhitewrites · 8/10 · 16 December 2017]

Caught this movie recently and I really enjoyed it for a Lifetime movie. My daughter is in the age range of the teen character and her friend had a scary experience with someone trying to connect with her through a video game chat. This movie really captured how teens can be manipulated, especially with technology. I thought the actress that played the mom and the teen daughter (reegan? ) were really good.