“Film is a machine for empathy,” Roger Ebert famously once said – and given how empathetic this scrappy thriller made me feel towards influencers, of all people, Influencer is a very well-oiled machine indeed. Director Kurtis David Harder takes a good elevator pitch – hot girl kills influencers and takes over their social media accounts – and turns it into something far smarter and entertaining than you might expect, with a small budget and a lead actor who, mark my words, will be in everything before long.
The film opens on Madison (Emily Tennant), an influencer who is in Thailand on a sort of working holiday – taking smiley selfies, posing with skincare products and barely leaving her hotel while espousing the values of travel to her thousands of followers. “I love soaking it all in and really experiencing Asia as it is meant to be experienced – away from my comfort zone,” her voiceover coos, while we watch her eat a burger alone at her hotel and mope over her manager-boyfriend, Ryan (Rory J Saper), who didn’t come with her. After posting a bubbly video on an idyllic beach, she stares blankly out at the beautiful horizon as her phone pings incessantly; this is a lonely, empty life she has chosen, and she seems to know it.
But in what seems like a chance meeting at the hotel bar, Madison crosses paths with CW (Cassandra Naud). CW is magnetic, confident and a seasoned solo traveller, and encourages Madison to stop obsessing over Ryan and actually enjoy her trip away from her phone. Madison’s passport mysteriously goes missing from her room and she breaks up with Ryan, but it seems she is finally having a nice time – until CW takes her to a remote island and leaves her there to die.
“You sell products to little girls. Do you really think they will come looking for you?” CW asks Madison, before taking off in their boat with Madison’s phone and leaving her drugged on the beach. The opening credits roll – we are 26 minutes in and just getting started.
CW has been described as a sort of Tom Ripley for the Instagram generation, stepping into the digital lives of others and enjoying their lifestyles by using AI to alter her face and voice to continue posting as them. It’s not an inaccurate comparison, but it is worth stressing that Naud makes this film as watchable and compelling as it is and, in a just world, this is the start of a great career. (Promisingly, she has been cast in Mike Flanagan’s upcoming remake of Carrie.)
While posting as Madison, CW heads to Bangkok to target a new influencer and finds fresh prey in Jessica (Sara Canning) – but her best laid plans are ruined when Ryan suddenly rocks up, thinking he’s tracked down Madison’s location from her Instagram photos.
The film’s co-writers, Harder and Tesh Guttikonda, smartly don’t give CW a backstory: she does what she does because she can, and the film is better without the baggage of a convoluted explanation. The entertainment comes from how convincing she is as a villain, and her ability to exploit these social media people with their shallow reading of the world. Naud’s facial birthmark is smartly, subtly incorporated; when Ryan tells CW that she is “unique” and should become an influencer herself, her dead-eyed silence tells you she has heard a version of this loaded compliment a hundred times before.
Influencer is an entertainingly cynical and nasty 90 minutes well spent. It was enough of a hit that it earned a sequel – pleasingly titled Influencers, which sees CW unleashed on an “incel” streamer and his conservative influencer girlfriend in Bali. It is the funnier of the two films and also worth watching – though it didn’t manage to make me empathise with incels. It’s a good film, not a miracle.
• Influencer and Influencers are streaming on Shudder via Prime Video in Australia, the US and UK; Influencer is also on Netflix in the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
