Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Kurtis David Harder
Starring: Cassandra Naud, Emily Tennant, Rory J. Saper, Sara Canning
A few years ago it was brought to my attention that some bloke on the
other side of the world was routinely copying and pasting my reviews
onto a website and passing them off as his own. After a few frustrating
weeks that largely involved me harassing him through his bogus site's
comments section, he eventually took down the site. There are far worse
things that can happen to you on the internet, but it was extremely
annoying nonetheless. Director Kurtis David Harder (Spiral) and co-writer Tesh Guttikonda's Influencer is
about the sort of identity theft that happens a lot on the internet,
where people steal others' work in an attempt to earn cash or clout. But
while it deals in this very modern phenomenon, it's a very old school
psycho-thriller at its core.
Madison (Emily Tennant) earns a living from her image, posting
photos of herself against glamorous backdrops to her Instagram account,
usually sporting some outfit she's been paid to promote. If she's a
modern day Dorothy Stratten then her Paul Snider is her photographer
boyfriend Ryan (Rory J. Saper), who manages her online persona,
from which he presumably benefits financially. After booking a trip to
Thailand with plans of exploiting the locale for what the kids call
"content," Ryan is forced to pull out due to work commitments, leaving
Madison to travel alone.
The fake front Madison presents online is detailed initially through a
voiceover in which she boasts about how great her life is and how she's
"experiencing Asia the way it was meant to be experienced." The montage
this plays over however shows a bored young woman going through the
motions of looking happy on camera while never leaving her resort, where
she chows down on tellingly American burgers.
Madison is shaken from her stupor by the charismatic CW (Cassandra Naud), who rescues her from a drunken lech and takes her on a whirlwind
tour of Thailand's nightlife and natural scenery. CW appears to be the
polar opposite of Madison. She's camera-shy, always covering a birthmark
that adorns her face (and does nothing to detract from her beauty), but
lives in the physical moment rather than online. When she takes pictures
of Madison, the latter is surprised to find she's using a film camera,
whose pictures must be developed rather than instantly available for
sharing. CW's charm allows Madison to drop her guard, and when CW takes
her new buddy to a secluded island, we begin to connect the dots back to
the image that opens the movie, that of a corpse face down in the sand
in a similar setting.
If that initial montage makes Madison look pathetic, it's not because
Influencer is setting out to pluck the low hanging fruit
of simply satirising "influencers." Those of us who roll our eyes at the
mere mention of that label will probably be guilty of taking an instant,
judgemental dislike to Madison. But as we spend time with her we begin
to feel bad for damning her with our preconceptions. She seems a decent
sort and is far from the type of narcissistic personality we might
ascribe to someone who makes a living showing themselves off to adoring
strangers. Madison, it seems, is deeply insecure, and it only takes a
single Zoom call to clue us into the domineering role Ryan is playing in
the whole enterprise. We dislike Ryan from the off, but once again
Harder and Guttikonda's script scolds us for judging too quickly. When
Ryan pops up later in the sort of role Vera Miles filled in
Psycho, we realise that he genuinely loves Madison and that he's an alright
bloke, even if he is a bit loud and obnoxious. Ryan appears to be
masking his own insecurities, and Influencer suggests that
an entire generation is struggling to put on a front in an age when
conventional career opportunities are rapidly evaporating.
It would have been easy for Harder to present us with unlikable victims
for a villain whose motives we might empathise with, so kudos for his
presenting us with a more humane approach. Through the casting of Naud,
the film plays with our preconceptions of those whose physical
appearance makes them stand out. If we surmise that CW's targeting of
Madison, and later a similar blonde influencer played by
Sara Canning, is motivated by jealousy of their conventional
looks, it's made explicitly clear that CW has long ago accepted that she
looks different. What seems at first like a self-conscious act of
covering her distinctive birthmark is later revealed as something
altogether more contrived. CW is the least insecure character in the
film, and while she commits some heinous acts, there's something that
young women in particular may find aspirational in the character's
resourcefulness. Naud is incredibly charismatic in her initial guise as
the worldly CW who sweeps Madison off her feet, but is also able to
convincingly freak us out when she later finds herself backed into a
corner and is forced to drop the act.
Ironically, Influencer benefits greatly from its
photogenic setting, taking a cue from real life influencers in adopting
a glamorous backdrop for production value. Like all those erotic
thrillers of the '90s that have recently been reassessed,
Influencer is set in a superficial world of gleaming white
villas that barely seem to have any furniture. Late on it even flirts
with the iconography of the erotic thriller when a topless CW mounts a
prone victim, putting us on edge as we expect her to reach for an ice
pick under the bed.
Its title wouldn't have drawn recognition a mere decade ago, but
Influencer's contemporary concerns mask a classic thriller, one that could have
been made 30 or 80 years ago. Technology may change, but thrillers
always rely on a compelling villain and a twisty plot, both of which are
very much present here.
