The Influencer Project Review: A Real Influencer, a Stale Horror Formula

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The Influencer Project Review: A Real Influencer, a Stale Horror Formula

Influencer horror has been having a moment for a while now, long enough that it’s started to feel less like a trend and more like its own crowded subgenre. The Influencer Project arrives into that crowd a little late, with one genuine advantage over most of its predecessors: it stars an actual influencer, and it’s loosely based on something that really happened to her.

Directed by Mike Nybroe in his feature debut, the film teams up with UK influencer Chiara King for her first lead role, built around a stalking ordeal she’s said to have experienced in real life.

Chasing Ten Million Followers in Copenhagen

Chiara King plays a version of herself, flown out to Copenhagen for brand deals and followed by a documentary crew capturing her content-creator life in full. Her goal is ten million followers, and every brand trip, livestream, and staged scare inside a haunted house gets her closer to it.

Then a user with the handle King_Stalker starts showing up everywhere she goes. The messages turn threatening. Photos arrive proving he’s close enough to watch her in person. What starts as an influencer’s work trip turns into a documentary crew trying to keep their subject alive while the cameras keep rolling.

Where the Concept Actually Lands

To its credit, The Influencer Project understands its subject in a way a lot of influencer-horror films don’t bother to. The middle stretch of the film grounds its stalking plot in something uncomfortably real: a security detail gets brought in, the threats escalate in ways that feel plausible, and the film digs into a genuinely dark observation about the business of online fame. The more danger King’s character appears to be in, the more her follower count climbs. Her audience, it turns out, likes her scared.

That’s a sharp, cynical idea, and when the film leans into it, it works. There’s real tension in watching the line blur between a person in genuine danger and a creator who’s learned that fear performs well on camera.

Where It Falls Apart

The problem is the film can’t commit to that version of itself. Just as it starts building something chilling and specific, it swerves into familiar found-footage horror beats, livestream commenters pointing out horror movie clichés in real time, chase sequences where a crew repeatedly fails to catch a man recording them from twenty feet away, and a third-act twist that undercuts most of what the film built up to that point.

The scares themselves lean heavily on jump-scare video clips that play more like startling ad breaks than genuine dread. Critics who’ve reviewed the film have been blunt about this shift, with more than one describing the back half as a step down from the grounded tension of the film’s middle section, trading real-world unease for standard genre shortcuts.

Chiara King’s Performance Carries the Film

Whatever the film’s structural problems, Chiara King herself is the clear bright spot. She’s charming and engaging in the earlier, lighter scenes showing her influencer routine, and she brings real commitment to the role once things turn dangerous. For an actress making her acting debut, it’s a performance that suggests more range than the material around her takes advantage of.

The film also gets something honest out of the gap between how King’s character insists she never misleads her followers and how transparently staged some of her “authentic” content clearly is. Whether that’s intentional commentary or an unexamined blind spot depends a lot on how generous you’re willing to be.

A Serious Subject Treated Inconsistently

It’s worth saying plainly: online stalking and harassment are real, frightening problems that disproportionately affect women with any kind of public online presence, and the film clearly wants to honor that. Its sharpest moments do exactly that. But by letting its third act devolve into standard horror-movie absurdity, it ends up undercutting the seriousness it spent its first half building.

Who Might Still Enjoy This

Fans of Chiara King specifically will likely get the most out of this one, since the film functions as a genuine showcase for her personality and screen presence. Anyone curious about found-footage horror with a social-media twist might also find some value in the film’s stronger middle stretch, even if the ending doesn’t stick the landing.

For viewers looking for a tightly executed horror film first and a commentary on influencer culture second, this probably isn’t the one to seek out. The genre elements feel like the least developed part of the whole project.

The Verdict

The Influencer Project has a genuinely smart idea buried inside it, and Chiara King gives it more credibility than the script fully earns. But a strong, grounded middle section gives way to a chaotic, cliché-heavy finish that leaves the film’s sharpest points feeling undercooked.

Rating: 2/5