Nearly three decades after The Blair Witch Project helped permanently alter the language of low-budget horror, some of the people responsible for that film return to the found-footage format with The Influencer Project. Blair Witch co-creator Eduardo Sánchez and producer Gregg Hale are aboard, while Mike Nybroe makes his directorial debut with a decidedly contemporary variation on the formula.
British beauty and lifestyle influencer Chiara King essentially plays a version of herself, traveling to Copenhagen with a documentary crew promising an unfiltered look behind the carefully maintained world of online fame. It is a smart setup because a documentary about an influencer already contains several levels of performance: Chiara is performing for her followers, performing for the documentary camera and, eventually, trying to determine whether the person she presents to millions of strangers has become something she can no longer control.
Then somebody starts watching. Of course, everybody is already watching, and that is the point.
Found footage has always depended upon the question of why somebody would continue filming when any sensible person would put the camera down and run. In 1999, that occasionally required some suspension of disbelief. Today, it barely requires an explanation. We live with cameras pointed at ourselves, documenting meals, vacations, relationships, arguments and sometimes tragedies before the people involved have even processed what happened. That makes King's casting particularly effective. She comes to the film with millions of social-media followers and her own experiences involving stalkers, giving the fictional construction an uncomfortable sliver of reality. The movie understands the peculiar bargain of online celebrity: followers are encouraged to believe they know someone they have never actually met. Most understand the boundary.
The frightening possibility is the person who doesn't.
Nybroe uses that uncertainty to gradually change the nature of what we're watching. The documentary footage begins to feel less like material intended for an audience and more like evidence somebody may eventually have to examine, while the distinction between viewer and voyeur becomes increasingly difficult to locate. There is inevitably a long shadow hanging over the movie; putting “from the creators of The Blair Witch Project” above another found-footage horror film creates expectations that could crush the thing before its opening shot.
Fortunately, The Influencer Project works best when it doesn't attempt to recreate Blair Witch. The technology has changed, but more importantly, our relationship with it has changed. The original film asked what happens when people disappear into a place where nobody can see them. This one considers almost the opposite nightmare: what happens when somebody can see you all the time?
That inversion gives The Influencer Project its identity. Copenhagen provides an attractive backdrop, but the film's real wilderness is digital, built from followers, screens, cameras and the constant expectation of access. Chiara can be surrounded by people and still feel frighteningly exposed because visibility is not the same thing as safety.
Not everything works equally well. Found footage remains a difficult format precisely because audiences now understand its tricks, and there are moments when the movie has to work harder than it should to justify keeping its cameras running and maneuver its pieces toward the inevitable confrontation. It is considerably more effective when it trusts the quieter discomfort of observation rather than pushing into familiar stalker-thriller territory. Someone existing just outside the frame remains more frightening than almost anything a filmmaker can eventually place inside it.
There is nevertheless something wonderfully appropriate about Sánchez and Hale returning to the form now. The Blair Witch Project appeared at a moment when the Internet could convince audiences that fictional people might actually have disappeared; The Influencer Project arrives in an era when people voluntarily broadcast enormous portions of their lives to strangers and then depend upon those same digital systems to maintain the boundary between public and private. Horror didn't have to invent that contradiction. It was already waiting for someone to point a camera at it.
The Influencer Project may carry the DNA of The Blair Witch Project, but its most effective moments belong firmly to the present, where everybody has a camera, everybody can have an audience, and being followed no longer means someone has to be walking behind you.
Sometimes all they have to do is click Follow.
MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime: 102 mins
Director: Mike Nybroe
Writer: Anders Jon and Mike Nybroe
Cast: Gemma Karlsen; Eos Karlsson; Chiara King
Genre: Horror
Tagline: From the Creators of the Blair Witch Project
Memorable Movie Quote: "I have a whole film crew following me around for the next few days"
Distributor: Hades Films
Official Site:
Release Date: October 2, 2026
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: An influencer travels to Copenhagen for a documentary about her online fame, but when an obsessive stalker begins tracking her movements, she must confront the terror and reclaim her power.
