Religious indoctrination shapes thoughts and behavior more profoundly than perhaps any other social construct. When concentrated in isolated communities, these potent notions of supernatural intervention can run contrary to the laws of nature, leaving believers with the imperative to trust the abstract over the concrete, making distrust of one’s own physical senses into a virtue. Such is the case for the small cluster of Appalachian families in Them That Follow. Their lives revolving around the impassioned if manipulative teachings that pour forth from the pulpit of their church, the denizens of this town don’t just profess to have faith in the Gospels, they put their lives on the line to prove it, handling venomous snakes as an ecstatic religious rite.
Unlike the highly musical Pentecostal frenzies described in Dennis Covington’s 1995 book Salvation on Sand Mountain, an embedded journalistic look into the snake-handling and arsenic-drinking Holiness churches, Them That Follow presents a congregation that may speak in tongues as they take up serpents, but who otherwise go about their worship with solemnity. Led by the wiry preacher Lemuel (Walton Goggins), who speaks cryptically even in his most casual conversations, the congregation meets in a glorified machine shed with a white neon cross lit up over the doorway. Rigid belief permeates every aspect of daily life, and suspicion comes with it, to the point that the preacher’s daughter Mara (Alice Englert) must shoplift a pregnancy test from the local convenience store. Although, this is also partly due to the fact that the shopkeeper (Olivia Colman) is also the mother of Augie (Thomas Mann), the young man who knocked Mara up.
While Them That Follow remains convincing in these moments of emotional repression, crushing shame and blind reverence—and thrives on the nuanced performances from a talented cast—the shocking religious rituals never feel fully lived in, the handled rattlesnakes too often coming across as exotic stage dressing. Too little time is spent exploring the fringe belief system itself, and the overarching theme of manipulation and misguided faith is never quite fleshed out beyond its surface-level fanatic nuttiness. But the performances keep pulling the film back from the brink of forgettability. Mara struggles with her faith throughout, trying to resist the love and lust that she’s kindled with the apostate Augie, as she’s essentially forced into an arranged engagement with the church-sanctioned Garret (Lewis Pullman). In these moments, the film threatens to dip into melodrama, with a warped love triangle taking central focus away from tangles of writhing serpents.
But Them That Follow excels when it heaps both inner and external conflict onto its characters. When the inevitable occurs and a character is badly bitten during worship, the film turns the screws, pitting the belief that thoughts and prayers can save lives against the urgent reality of a festering wound that threatens to take a life. With a trip to the hospital virtually off the table—in part because it flies in the face of church doctrine but also largely because the preacher is frequently in hot water with johnny law due to the illegality of keeping these snakes in captivity—blind faith makes a captive of the wounded. In these moments, the film hums with fierce tension among strong characters, which mostly forgives its glossing over a deeper examination of what exactly drives people to embrace the dangerous and nonsensical in the desperate pursuit for transcendence.
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