'Influencer' Has Fun With the Horrors Of the Social Media Attention Economy

By Petr Navovy | Film | May 8, 2024 |

By Petr Navovy | Film | May 8, 2024 |

It can be difficult, sometimes, when making a film that aims to critique a particular systemic phenomenon, to not fall into the trap of making it all about a particular individual. Sure, you can use a character as a proxy in order to examine an issue, but it’s always a bit of a cop-out and a shame if that’s where things stop. Psychological horror film Influencer, which debuted at the 2022 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival and was released more widely on Shudder in May 2023, does not fall into this trap. Instead, in diving headfirst into the horrors of the social media economy, director Kurtis David Harder delivers a lean and effective story that remembers to critique the game more so than the players trapped within it.

Madison (Emily Tenant) is a social media influencer spending a few weeks on a working vacation in Thailand. What that means in practice is that she spends her days wandering listlessly around her posh resort, alternating between getting massages, swimming in the pool, and occasionally getting a fancy cocktail from the hotel bar. Periodically, she has to stop to arrange her hair, fix a smile on her face, and take a selfie for her followers. Inspiring caption mandatory, natch. An aspirational and effervescent voice-over from Madison in the opening few minutes superimposed over her blank expression and rote movements is not exactly the subtlest thesis introduction, but it works well with what follows over Influencer’s 92 minutes.

There is some gorgeous cinematography on display throughout the film. It would be difficult not to translate Thailand’s beauty onto the screen, but more so than the sumptuous frames filled with skies, trees, and sunsets, it’s the way cinematographer David Schuurman shoots Influencer’s characters that work in its favor: A haunting isolation pervades their existence whether they are moving through the depopulated areas of (I assume) off-season resort hotels or the actual, living streets of Bangkok. It doesn’t matter if they’re physically alone or surrounded by people, the sense of loneliness and alienation persists. Emily Tennant and her main co-star Cassandra Naud both acquit themselves well, with Naud in particular turning in a very watchable Chirgurh-lite, cryptic performance.

A curious turn about a third of the way through Influencer switches up the perspective in a way that at first threatens to diffuse the tension that the film had built up until then, but which it ends up deftly using to ratchet the tension up even further. Refreshingly, the film doesn’t get preachy with its message, and there’s something very ’90s about it all. If you switched up the subject matter to a more era-appropriate one, it wouldn’t look too out of place in the neo-noir that the decade did so well. Influencer doesn’t quite get its tonal balance right, and I do think the ending undercuts the message to a degree, but this is a fine way to spend a weeknight if you’re in the mood for something that gets at certain tech-anxieties many of us have.