2020s

The Influencer Project (2026)

The Influencer Project is a smart, unsettling little thriller that understands exactly what it wants to say about the age of the algorithm, and mostly says it very well. It comes from the team behind The Blair Witch Project, and that pedigree shows: this is found footage with a real purpose, using the visual grammar of the influencer age to burrow under your skin. I had a good time with it, and it left me thinking. Three and a half stars.

The film opens on something genuinely jarring, a young woman's death broadcast live to an audience of strangers, and then it snaps, abruptly and deliberately, to our protagonist Chiara (Chiara King, playing a version of herself). Chiara is an influencer on the rise, and we follow her to Copenhagen as she courts followers, charms brands and chases the next viral moment. It is all glossy energy and ring-light sheen, and the film is clever in the way it lets you enjoy that world before it starts to curdle.

The curdling arrives in the form of Kingslayer, an anonymous presence who begins stalking Chiara and threatens to kill her if she carries on making content. What makes the film sharper than the average stalker thriller is what happens next: the threat itself becomes material, something to be filmed, packaged and monetised, and the line between genuine danger and manufactured drama grows deliberately, queasily thin. To say much more would spoil a story that has a real twist up its sleeve, and it is one I did not see coming.

What I can say is that it builds to a finale that is both tense and pointed, and that the film's cleverest trick is turning its own medium into its subject. This is a movie about attention, about what we will do to earn it and what it costs the people caught in its glare, and it lands that commentary on both the good and the genuinely dark sides of influencer culture without ever tipping into a lecture. The closing credits, played out over a scroll of invented social media comments, are a small and perfect final touch.

On a craft level it is impressive. The whole thing is built to look and move like influencer content, and that immersion is a big part of why it works. The soundtrack is atmospheric and quietly menacing, the pacing is tight, and you can absolutely feel the Blair Witch DNA in the way it wrings dread out of ordinary-looking footage. Chiara King, in what is essentially her first acting role, is a real find, and carries the film with a naturalism that makes the horror hit harder.

It is not flawless. It works better as an idea and an experience than as a piece of pure character drama, and a couple of beats ask you to go with them rather than fully earning the turn. But those are small complaints about a film that is doing something genuinely interesting, and doing it with real style.

Three and a half stars. The Influencer Project is a sharp, atmospheric and thought-provoking thriller that uses its found-footage form better than almost anything since the one that made its creators' names. If you have ever felt a flicker of unease about the machine we all feed every day, this one will get right under your skin.

Reviewed from a screener provided by the distributor. The Influencer Project is in UK cinemas from 16 October.

This film depicts suicide. If you feel affected by anything you have read here, please reach out and talk to someone.

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