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An opening text announcing “This film is influenced by real events” provides the first and last moment of inspiration in “The Influencer Project,” whether the joke is deliberate or not. Mike Nybroe’s debut feature is far
from the first horror movie to posit practitioners of the titular digital-age profession as a killer’s prey, and surely won’t be the last. Billed as coming “from the creators of ‘The Blair Witch Project’” — and that film’s co-director Eduardo Sanchez is a producer here — it could be worse. Yet despite not strictly hewing to the found-footage template established by the 1999 sleeper hit, this opus lands smack in the mediocre middle of umpteen forgettable imitations churned out ever since.
British aspiring singer turned social media personality Chiara King get an “introducing” credit playing herself in staged circumstances, terrorized by a stalker while on a promotional trip to Copenhagen. She, like the film, is competent without leaving much of an impression — neither a star nor a franchise is born here. Still, horror fans up for seeing anything new in the countdown to Halloween will find this new “Project” meets basic subgenre expectations, even if it does nothing to elevate or transcend them.
A prologue finds a teenage girl (Ronja Hauge Schierup) announcing to livestream viewers that “Today is the day we are going to go viral.” She then performs a drastic act that guarantees only the saddest kind of fame. Selling herself as a contrastingly upbeat life-lover is twentysomething Chiara, whose own “viral kissing video” (which we don’t actually see) apparently kickstarted an online celebrity with 50 million views. That got her a manager, Alice (Jazmine Summer), along with lucrative product tie-in deals, and now an invitation to visit the Danish capital as part of a tourism campaign. In exchange, she’ll post her own typical videos while shopping, sightseeing, clubbing, sampling select restaurants, and so on. She’ll also have a local documentary crew filming her every move, its principal personnel cameraman Mike (played by director Nybroe) and younger assistant Victor (Luca Storm).
All this is innocuous enough, Chiara included. Alice tells her, “Your followers love you being you.” But in a dramatic context, her persona as a nice, pretty but relatably ordinary young woman on perpetual holiday doesn’t make for a particularly interesting heroine. Of course, peril soon surfaces to sully the endless trying-on of new frocks and posing in front of monuments. A mysterious user account for one “King Slayer,” whose profile photo is a sinister mask, begins posting graphic threats of what he’ll do to her if she doesn’t “stop talking” online. Then it becomes clear that he is tailing her in public places, uploading photos and video clips from her recent itinerary to prove it. Things soon escalate further, requiring police notification and the hiring of an ex-military security expert (Eos Karlsson).
Yet as frightened as Chiara frequently is, and as concerned as the crew appear to be, somehow days keep going by without her ever thinking, “I gotta get the hell outta here.” When being hunted by a perp in a mask, what’s a person to do but dance at a nightclub where half the patrons are wearing glittery masks? Her follower count goes up whenever she appears scared. So even as danger rises, she visits “haunted houses” where something will inevitably get her running and screaming in dark corridors. Naturally, the climax takes place at a vast empty warehouse she and her remaining colleagues have been lured to. What could go wrong?
It is a tribute to King and Nybroe that this increasingly implausible scenario (penned by the director and two others) doesn’t induce outright howls. Nonetheless, it is pretty silly. And the stakes aren’t very high — while likable enough, this influencer doesn’t generate any great viewer empathy. If she perishes, will the pain of diminished endorsements be felt by mid-to-upmarket fashion brands? When finally unmasked, the perp gets a big speech about the corrupting influence of influencers on impressionable minds. But you’ve certainly heard all that before, not least with considerably more weight in the current anti-social-media documentary expose “Your Attention Please.”
One can be thankful “Project” isn’t all pseudo-“found footage,” with some of cinematographer Daniel Parmo’s images granted an omniscient POV in full widescreen. Otherwise, we get diverse formats to reflect the various media Chiara’s travails are recorded and/or posted on.
A few tolerable jump scares aside, the film isn’t terribly scary, blame for which must be partly laid at the door of DJ White Shadow — who, as music supervisor and (with MFR) composer, lessens suspense with too many dance tracks, then with pedestrian thriller backing. There’s a cut duly sung by King under the closing credits entitled “Bubble Gum,” perhaps an unfortunate choice for a movie that ultimately feels no more substantial than that. Nevertheless, an obligatory post-credits tag sequence raises the specter of sequels that few are likely to clamor for.
