Influencer (2023)

Posted By: brian@brianschell.com June 6, 2023

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The sets and locations are beautiful to look at. With a cast that pulls it off well and an interesting script that builds nicely, we found it an entertaining win.

Synopsis

We open on a fairly small island. As we zoom in, we see someone lying on the beach, possibly dead.

We cut to Madison, a woman who talks about travel. She’s a travel influencer in Thailand. She talks about all these places and what an amazing time she’s having, but it looks like everywhere she goes is deserted. And she seems kind of bored and unhappy when she’s not smiling it up for social media. That night, at a bar, a guy dressed like a tourist starts a conversation. He offers to show Madison around, but another woman butts in and rescues her. She’s CW, and she has a huge birthmark on her face.

Madison and CW talk about why they’re here and CW asks Madison to go somewhere with her tomorrow. Madison does her selfie-talk for her social media, but CW avoids being in the pictures. Madison whines about her boyfriend, who isn’t with her on this trip. CW gets them new boyfriends for the night very quickly.

Madison returns to her hotel and finds her room has been ransacked, and now she’s missing her passport. It’ll take two weeks to get another passport, and CW offers for Madison to stay at her place until then. She calls Ryan, her boyfriend, and tells him that she can’t come home right away. He blames her, so she breaks up with him.

Madison and CW end up at CW’s house. They take CW’s boat out to a remote island, just the two of them. Madison immediately notices that there’s no cell signal there.

Madison jokes that CW brought her here to kill her. CW says no, she won’t do that, but she just might leave her here alone, forever. She’s very convincing about how Madison will starve to death or die in about three days without drinkable water. Madison laughs, “I like that, but people would notice I’m gone.” There’s more talking about how useless social media is. It’s all good fun.

Credits roll. Yes, at 26 minutes in.

First thing in the morning, CW takes all Madison’s stuff and leaves on her boat before Madison wakes up, just as she “joked” she would last night.

Three weeks later, CW has taken over Madison’s social media accounts and everything else. No one online notices any difference. Since there’s so much video of the real Madison, it’s easy enough to do face swaps digitally, wearing a blond wig and dressing like her.

CW goes to Bangkok, where she hunts down another social media influencer, Jessica, and follows her around. After making herself known to Jessica, CW breaks into Jessica’s hotel room and steals her passport. CW invites Jessica to stay with her, but when they get to “CW’s” house, they find Ryan there, Madison’s boyfriend. This is a complication no one was expecting.

In the morning, “Madison” calls Ryan and tells him to leave. It’s all done on CW’s computer with voice synthesizer mods. Ryan and Jessica hit it off and talk about Madison, thwarting CW’s evil plans.

Jessica gets a new hotel room to get away from CW. She thinks CW is taking advantage of Madison’s friendship and doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her. CW then takes the direct approach and beats Jessica to death. She puts Jessica’s body into her suitcase. Ryan comes home with a bunch of friends.

Ryan figures something’s up with CW and doesn’t think Madison’s “work” is as good as it used to be. He offers to make CW a “star” but before that can happen, she spikes his drink. She undresses him while he lays in bed, mostly unconscious. She uses the opportunity to use FaceID to unlock his phone and delete a photo of her. Then she unwraps a condom, throws it on the floor, and goes to sleep topless beside him.

Ryan wakes up in the morning and doesn’t remember any of what happened last night. CW then goes home and burns the rest of Madison’s stuff except her handwritten diary notebook.

We then get a flashback to Madison and Ryan first meeting and him getting her started on social media influencing. Back in the present, we see that Ryan hasn’t given up on Madison. He goes back to the motel and runs into Rupert, the British guy who hit on Madison. He remembers Madison leaving with CW. He takes a closer look at Madison’s videos, and figures out there’s been some alteration to hide CW’s birthmark. He knows what she’s been doing.

Ryan breaks into CW’s place and goes through her things, finding Madison’s diary in there. He knocks out CW and ties her up. He read in the diary about CW taking Madison to a “wonderful island.” She accuses him of stalking Madison electronically, which is how he found her in the first place. She accuses Ryan of beating and killing Madison. CW has a bruise. Who are the police going to believe?

CW offers to take Ryan to Madison. As they approach her boat, she pushes him off the dock and drowns him. She goes through all his stuff and finds an engagement ring, which she promptly puts on. She makes a post as Madison on her account saying she’s dumping Ryan, who was a predator.

CW drives her boat to the island to dispose of the bodies. She sees signs that Madison might still be alive, so she gets right to work looking for her. Madison finds her first. She yells “You bitch!” as she whacks her with a log.

Madison goes to the boat and finds Ryan and Jessica’s bodies. She drives away taking the boat, bodies and all, leaving CW on the island alone.

Commentary

Hopefully, Madison had the boat pointed on the right heading to hit land. She had no idea where they were and knew nothing about boats. She might have ended up in the middle of the Atlantic.

Why are all these resorts deserted? It’s clearly not the off-season, as the weather is amazing.

There are several scenes, which are probably important, where CW holds a phone with a bunch of text on it that we could not read on our giant 4K TV. Wonder what that was about? It needed to be zoomed in a lot closer if we were supposed to read it.

The scenery and sets are beautiful. The acting is decent. The plot is interesting and unique; a different kind of identity theft.