Under the Influencer really wants you to put your fucking phone done and watch hot people flirt and that’s all we ever wanted and deserved.
Under the Influencer is the spiritual sibling of the cattier and more jagged Ingrid Goes West and Black Mirror’s Season 3, “Nosedive.” Underneath its meticulously sugary, pastel-hued exterior is a tantalizing critique of the microfame life, not so unlike its genre predecessors from years before, but where it really shines is in its gut punch of a surprise third act (after the jump, spoilers).
The cast of UTI (yes) is expertly arranged, each piece of the ensemble has carved out for themselves a choice line and a little heart. Victoria “Tori”/”Vicky”, played by the fabulous Taylor Joree Scorse, is an aging social media influencer whose Mr. Beast/Candide-esque moral code of “no drama” is challenged at every turn. Tori is chronically underestimated for her looks, her adherence to positive outlook, and her aspirations to make great art. The touch of having an externalized persona to pump Tori up and check her impulses is an aesthetically fun touch to the film.
Tori’s two confidantes and employees Sarah (Sara Young Chandler) and Christopher (Zach Paul Brown) find ways to make the role their own. Christopher’s betrayal and move to the younger, meaner, vapid distillation of the social media influencer constantly chasing the next viral sensation gives Tori a chance to lose her cool and let loose the dogs of war, though she doesn’t. Becca, played by Ava Westcott, embodies the Glass Onion’s Madelyn Cline character, pure id in the pursuit of every last drop of viewership, the next generation of social media personality, completely uninterested in the creation of parasocial relationships, purely motivated through the dissolution and branding of self. “I give them her and keep me for myself,” Tori explains just before Ava finds a way to slash and burn her childhood idol.
UTI doesn’t necessarily have any new insight into the ego-destroying rat race for virality: put down your phones, disconnect, countless Freudian platitudes for the uncoupling of self-worth and external validation of strangers, the de-commodification of sex, the defense of privacy. And then it shifts down gear into a singing movie. Your mileage is going to vary for the original score, but what can be universally appreciated is the hot brilliance of the third act’s surprise meet cute with the too-hot-to-handle Sayer, played by Spencer Vaughn Kelly. Sayer is impossibly dashing, chatty, confident, broad chested, slightly worse-for-wear, veteran, and mama’s boy. It’s actually a little wild that it takes so long for her to ask him to step on her, daddy, but ultimately, the meet cute does this fantastic judo flip of thawing out the winter sequence of Tori’s on air meltdown (possibly a send up to influencer Essena O’Neil’s internet famous uncoupling from social media in 2015), forcing Tori to choose between the comeback and her new man.
UTI shines more as a romcom than as commentary and that’s okay, maybe even preferable. The sharp transitions in the first act give way to the clever dialogue and unembellished cinematography of the third, and the stylistic differences between these two moments in the story arc are distinct and fun.
