Influencer review – smart thriller about Instagrammers in mortal peril

Cassandra Naud is striking if a little opaque as a predator seducing image-obsessed tourists in Thailand

In this smartly arranged thriller by Kurtis David Harder, Canadian actor Cassandra Naud holds her own as a kind of social media Tom Ripley, out in Thailand preying on vacuous, smartphone-toting influencers while coveting their silky lifestyles. Broken down into four parts following different characters, the film dabbles in but doesn't wholly conform to the now-standard satirical takedown of 21st-century popinjays. There's something darker and more solipsistic at work here: Naud's repeated spiel of They won't even notice you're gone. Nobody cares" is just as rehearsed and trite as other airheaded Insta-platitudes.

Her character, CW, first gets her claws into Madison (Emily Tennant), a fellow American making nice for her feeds but actually moping around the Thai coast because she's having a hard time with her British boyfriend and manager Ryan (Rory J Saper). So when CW steps in at a bar to protect her from a sharking expat, Madison is glad to be swept into the wake of this free-spirited font of local secrets. Weeks later, she has gone missing, CW has headed to Bangkok to target Madison's bougier and more confident clone Jessica (Sara Canning), and Ryan - rattled by the radio silence from his girlfriend - jumps on a plane.