Influencer (2023) – Under The Influence

Released: 26th May
Seen: 29th May

The age of digital media has created a plethora of new terminology that we have been quick to accept, from “Doomscrolling” to “Going Viral” we’ve just taken on these terms as a part of our regular lexicon. One of the most fascinating terms that’s been really jump started by the digital media age is “Influencer” where someone basically spruiks goods and services using an online persona for their audience. 

This can be someone’s entire career now, just travelling the world and telling everyone about the amazing time they’re having while getting paid for it. It’s an insanely lucrative job if you can pull it off (AKA be conventionally attractive and have the ability to appear perfect at all times in order to avoid cancellation) but it’s also a world that’s just ripe for satire and mockery, something Horror films have been doing a lot of lately. Some mockery of this world has been absolutely amazing, like the recent horror film Sissy but others are not fully realised, like the imaginatively named Influencer.

Influencer starts by following a well-known travel influencer named Madison (Emily Tennant) who is doing what she does best, holidaying in a beautiful location and telling her audience online all about it. This time Madison is vacationing in Thailand and things seem to go well, she even makes a new friend at a bar by the name of CW (Cassandra Naud) who can show her some fun places around town that aren’t on any tourist map. Normally Madison wouldn’t have the time for this but her passport’s mysteriously gone missing and it’ll take a few weeks to get a new one from the embassy so she might as well hang out with CW and enjoy it… such a pity that CW has some plans for Madison that don’t have the happiest.

As a concept, Influencer has a ton of great ideas to offer. It tackles a lot of modern worries about technology and the internet in a way that’s absolutely essential, from the way that influencers are incredibly replaceable to the issues of how easily modern technology can allow you to take over someone’s life. It’s kind of scary to realise that a few scheduled posts on Instagram and a few well-timed tweets could keep someone’s disappearance completely secret for several weeks. This technology used to be the stuff of fantasy but it’s now very real, there’s tech that can make an AI replica of someone’s voice using text prompts that’s used in one of the more interesting scenes in Influencer and it’s unnerving to realise just how easy all this could be.

Influencer also comments on the idea of internet fame and how addictive it can be, how people will do just about anything in order to get that dopamine hit that you get when you see a like or a comment on something you posted (leave a comment if you wanna shoot me up with all that good dopamine!) and in this case, the lengths someone would go to in order to get that hit is pretty intense and makes for one hell of a film… in theory. In practice, sadly, Influencer is mostly just a little bit on the average side.

Part of Influencer’s problem is that everyone involved is just boring as hell, not really worthy of a lot of attention from any audience. Now if the point of the film was to mock how lifeless some influencers are that would be one thing, have the vacuous blonde model influencer have the personality of sandpaper so it can be mildly entertaining to watch her have her life overtaken by someone interesting but that would imply this was an intentional choice and it just isn’t, it’s just that every character is kind of boring and basic. In a film about the world of influencers, all the characters do is influence you to take a nap and maybe read a book because they have nothing that interesting going on. Even the murders aren’t that interesting, certainly nothing that shocking or amusing.

That lack of energy is the thing that really holds Influencer back, which sucks because the structure of this thing works well. Each twist and turn in the narrative suggests a juicier story, the non-conventional opening that holds back on the opening credits for an incredibly long time has you questioning what direction the film will take and the final scenes have plenty of potential for something truly shocking but it feels like everyone’s just holding back and not giving this idea the kind of energy that it deserves. It’s a film making fun of one of the most vapid image-based professions in the world and it doesn’t have the guts to take that on with the gusto it demands.

On top of that it’s just kind of bland in the audio-video sense, none of the shots are really that interesting or used to create any real tension and the audio is badly mixed, background music is at the same level as the dialogue in several parts which drowns out some of the conversations and makes it even harder to get into the story (which is already hard enough to get into considering the blandness of the main characters). It’s not one of the worst films to look at but there’s nothing about it that stands out in a good way. It’s just kind of there, making you strain just a little to hear what everyone’s saying and not really being that great to look at (again, film about an image-based profession… being interesting to look at should be a fundamental element)

It’s a shame that Influencer ends up being kind of drab but that’s the best way to put it. The ideas behind it are interesting enough to make watching it tolerable, it’s not the worst background noise that’s ever been created but it’s not as engaging as it absolutely should be nor is it that memorable. There are entire major characters that’re just kind of pointless, one in particular who looks so much like Madison that you think they’re going to pull off a whole “It was Madison fucking with everyone this entire time” plot but it’s just uninspired casting. It’s not awful, but it’s not good enough to be worth a like, follow or subscribe.