It’s a triple feature of flicks about influencers falling into a rabbit hole of horrific situations, so let’s get right into it.
INFLUENCER (2022)
I was pleasantly surprised at all the twists and turns in this movie, which taps into the vibe of early 90s thrillers with a modern update focusing on an influencer and the girl who wants to be her.
I won’t even get into it much because I don’t want to spoil it, but basically, an influencer on a trip to Thailand alone befriends another girl who has ulterior motives.
There are plenty of unexpected developments, and we see that even the best laid plans of psychos can go wrong.
Just check it out it if you haven’t seen it. It definitely keeps you watching. Plus, the closing credits use the awesome song “Getup” by Nicholas Franchise.
CABIN GIRL (2023)
This movie annoyed me. For starters, it is loaded with fake scare setups and false music cues galore. For instance, ominous music plays as it look like a dude with an axe is creeping up behind our main girl. He swings—cut to her totally unaware—cut back to see that axe dude is somewhere else knocking a padlock off a door. Ugh.
Anyway, an influencer decides to get away from it all by renting a cabin in the woods, where she meets a really cute guy.
He tells her about a girl who jumped off a bridge in town and lived in the very cabin in which she is staying.
She becomes obsessed with the girl. She researches her story. She sees visions of her and has nightmares about her, giving us some early 00s ghost girl action.
She uses a Ouija board to speak with her and becomes convinced she was murdered.
It’s all very generic and typical…until our main girl becomes so crazed about what happened to this girl that she starts stalking men with an axe in the final act.
The twist is both somehow surprising and a total eye-roller.
#NO_FILTER (2022)
This is a supernatural slasher for the new millennium, with most of the action taking place over video chats as an influencer is terrorized by a presence in her house.
While on a vacation in Bali, the main teen girl (talk about privileged white girls) meets her influencer idol, who is known for his scare pranks. She helps him play out one of his pranks, which involves wearing a freaky mask.
And right there is where this film feels like it leaves out a major plot point. By the time the film ends, we have to assume the teen girl brought some sort of supernatural presence home with her. Did it come from the mask? We will never know. And if it wasn’t the fault of the mask, then what was the cause? Did it enter their phones as they filmed? There are some meta comments about The Ring between the two influencers in Bali, so maybe the whole point of that reference is to clue us in that a ghostly presence is using phone video instead of a VHS tape to terrorize a new generation. Again, we will never know…unless a sequel is made that explains it.
You just have to go with it and enjoy the thrill ride. The girl ends up alone in her home when her parents go out, making for some good suspense scenes as weird things begin happening and freaking her out. Problem is, since she is attempting to create a scare prank channel just like the guy she met, that effort begins backfiring on her.
She’s not sure if she’s part of a scare prank or if the craziness is really happening, and on top of that, when she calls a friend for help, the friend think she is pulling a prank for her channel and refuses to help her.
It’s fun, it has a bit of a throwback to early 00s teen horror, and there are several bloody kills and some black demon eye action.
