By George & Josh Bate
In just two years since the release of Influencer, the entire landscape of AI and deepfake technology has radically changed. What was once brand new and hardly explored now increasingly plays a role in every dimension of our lives – for better and for worse. In his new film Influencers, writer/director Kurtis David Harder uses the nefarious ways in which this technology can be exploited as the backdrop for a winding and topical psychological thriller with an ever-changing narrative and a new twist around every corner.
Influencers begins in the picturesque south of France, where the murderous and identity-thieving CW (Cassandra Naud) from the previous film now lives an idyllic life with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar). During a getaway to commemorate their one-year anniversary together, the couple cross paths with Charlotte (Georgina Campbell), an eccentric influencer whose intrusive nature begins to irk CW. When she acts on a violent impulse, CW finds her quiet life with Diane under threat and her previous victim Madison (Emily Tennant) back in the fold.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to speak with writer/director Kurtis David Harder about his new movie, its unpredictable and timely story, the stance it takes on AI and the Red Pill subculture, and more.
Like its predecessor, Influencers unfolds with a twisty narrative that remains unpredictable from scene to scene. Harder addressed whether he maps out his winding stories beforehand or, like director Zach Cregger and his approach to Barbarian and Weapons, devises the story as he writes. “I typically know kind of the ins and outs of the general direction, but I think there’s some fun to kind of leaving something to be explained,” Harder reflected. “When I came into this one, I wrote that cold open with kind of the suicide and didn’t know exactly what was going to cause that. I had some ideas of where we were going to take that.”
Modern moviegoers are not as frequently surprised by what they see as they once were due to the breadth of films and shows available in an instant at our fingertips. This gave Harder an additional challenge in making Influencers as unpredictable and subversive as it is. “I think modern audiences have kind of seen everything,” Harder said. “So they kind of know what to expect when you leave a red herring or you put a little clue in into something – they’re going to pick up on it pretty quickly. So, for coming into making movies in the modern age, you have to do a little bit of extra legwork in terms of understanding, of being even one step ahead of the expectation in an almost postmodern rock, paper, scissors, rock way.”
Aiming to keep viewers on their toes, Harder takes the murderous, identity-thieving CW (Cassandra Naud) in unexpected directions in the film by expanding our understanding of her capacity for good and evil. “I think her character is just so fun to play with and see different sides of,” Harder remarked. “And I think the first film we [saw] exactly how she goes around her serial killer tendencies. But this one was expanding on that and kind of a bigger scope of it.”
Harder elaborated on how his interest in expanding CW’s character made him want to make a sequel. “I think it was really fun for me coming into the sequel, what really clicked and made me want to want to approach doing another one was, was that aspect of seeing her living this normal life in in Europe, and then seeing it unfold and not knowing exactly where it fits in the grand scheme of the timeline.”
Despite unveiled novel elements of her psychology to the audience, Influencers ensures that CW remains an illusive figure with a mysterious origin story. Harder discussed the tricky balance of diving into a villainous character’s background without eliminating their intrigue and menace. “[Cassandra Naud] and I had a lot of conversations about that history,” Harder stated. “And I think part of what is fun about a character like this is the enigmatic qualities of you don’t know exactly where they came from. I think we wanted to tread the fine line and play with that a bunch.” Harder continued, “We want to kind of keep it a bit in shadows, revealing just enough that you can kind of pull apart your own perspective.”
CW isn’t the only returning character from Influencer. In an unexpected move, Harder reintroduces Madison (Emily Tennant), CW’s victim from the previous movie, into the villain’s web of schemes and lies. Through Madison, Harder was able to embed on the negative consequences of AI, deepfake technology, and social media use into his film. “I think it was fun to explore the real life potential ramifications of a situation like this, of what what happens in the first film,” Harder said. “I think I’ve seen that happen where something horrible happens and someone goes viral, a friend go viral, and then the entire internet just jumped and just started criticizing and being like, ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t like this at all. This is fake.’ And I think like seeing that
and seeing how if someone who comes back with several bodies, it’s like, ‘What does that look like in a real world situation with how ruthless the internet can be? And I think that that was really fun to explore and seeing a very evolved version of Madison and seeing what she had become.”
With Madison’s arc in the film, Harder explores the mental health and tangible consequences of AI and deepfake technologies readily available to the public today. But the filmmaker sees the sequel as being less about these terrifying new technologies and more about what the use (or misuse) of these technologies say about us as people. “For me, it’s more about the character and their journey, as opposed to how the tech works,” said Harder. “It’s more about the potential social problems that we face as a culture…technology is going to come. And I think it’s about how we deal with it. I’m obviously, as an artist, pretty anti-AI use in terms of art. And I’m taking a stronger stance as time goes on. I think both of these movies feel a little bit that way. But I think in terms of the films, it’s more about the issues that we’re probably going to face that are residual aspects of this [technology], of how we’re going to use this technology. Not necessarily saying technology is bad, because technology is inevitable. It’s [about] how what is our relationship with these things? And how do we have a healthy way without losing ourselves?”
Harder builds upon the commentary of modern technology and social media from Influencer by exploring the growing Red Pill, male supremacist, Andrew Tate-inspried subculture. “It’s very prevalent that we’re seeing the rise of these kind of voices,” Harder reflected. “For me, just my own perspective, I think you can’t really judge the preachers. I think you got to look at why is the audience becoming so popular? And so, when you’re looking at these young men that are gravitating toward these voices, that’s something that needs to be explored on a bigger level.”
Influencers commentates on the hypocricy and insecurities of many of these voices through the character Jacob, played by Jonathan Whitesell. Streaming to millions, Jacob spouts misogynistic opinions about the roles men and women should play, despite not adhering to these roles in his private life. “A big thing that [Jonathan Whitesell] and I talked about was that audience capture concept where you become a bit of a slave to what works online and the way that you kind of have this feedback loop with your audience that wants to hear more of this topic or this perspective,” Harder stated. “And I think that to me is really fun to explore and dive into and see the extreme side of him in his introduction and then slowly pull that back and see how did we get there.”
With an increasingly unhinged CW pushed to brink, Influencers culminates in a wild finale featuring a meticuously choreographed fight scene. The sequence plays like a microcosm of the film more broadly in a way – there’s twists, turns, and you have no idea what’s going to happen next or who’s going to come out on top. Harder spoke about how he originally wanted to have a climactic fight sequence in his previous film and how he was grateful to be able to incorporate one in Influencers. “On the first film, in our finale, we did have a fight planned,” Harder recounted. “We had a choregraphed plan of how we wanted this finale in the first film. And weather and logistics and the fact that we were just a very small film, we we’re able to pull it off…Coming into [Influencers], it was really special to be able to pull off what we really wanted to pull off with the first film, but we just didn’t have the resources or time.”
With two films in the franchise sitting at over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences are clearly resonating with the sprawling and topical thrillers masterminded by Harder. Hopefully, Harder is able to similarly draw on the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, deepfake technology, and social media to craft a third installment in the near future.