This film recently got my attention when I saw a shout-out for it on Blabbermouth. A Horror film starring Lizzy Borden, a Metal soundtrack, and a story about Instagram influencers getting hacked to death. Fuck yes! What could possibly go wrong?
I generally love low-budget Horror films. The limitations are forgiven, providing there are plenty of other things to love. Entertaining dialogue, cool death scenes, general silliness etc. There's a fine line between 'really cool' and 'a bit shit' in this arena, and sadly, as much as I wanted to love this, Die Influencers Die falls into the latter category.
Unfortunately, the casting isn't great. The 'influencers' are all about two decades too old to be convincing. I get the impression that the writer was aiming this at boomers who hate millennials and the concept of influencers, without actually knowing that much about what influencers actually do.
Story-wise, it doesn't make a great deal of sense and has more holes in it than a swiss cheese. We start off with a creepy dude who tries to convince a model, Moxie, to have regular sex with him in exchange for social-media likes, or her career will be over. Shortly after she refuses, he kills her and puts her in a fridge. Lizzy Borden's character appears in a puff of CGI smoke and offers her the chance to come back to life to get revenge. She gets her revenge on her murderer pretty quickly, but then decides to kill a bunch of other fuckers too, because "Why not?"
There's a huge irony here that seems to be lost. The film effectively condemns ego, superficiality, and desperation for popularity. Some of the cast are aging porn stars who have had so much Botox and plastic surgery, they barely look like real humans and more like inflatable sex dolls that have been returned to the factory for being a bit too creepy.
The death scenes are messy but un-interesting. Lots of orangey blood and sausages. I don't care about any of these characters, and when they get despatched it's ultimately unrewarding.
Die Influencers Die suffers from an issue that has killed many a movie. The villains are crap. Lizzy Borden's character just looks like him in his stage clothes, and is a whole lot of nothing. He's not scary or intriguing, just a bit crap. Moxie's character is just a psycho in a clown-mask that is also a bit 'whatever'. If you were hoping for a female answer to Terrifier's 'Art the clown', you'll be more disappointed than an orphan at Christmas. I believe someone's desperately attempting to ignite a post-porn career in Horror movies, but has crashed harder than Vince Neil.
It's not all bad news though. Frankie Pozos who plays Stue Harrington, the alpha social media guy, is excellent. He has some funny lines and his performance is easily the best thing about this movie. The only other actor who's any good is Katie Morgan, who plays a shallow bimbo. I wouldn't be surprised if these two are full-time actors and the others are just the director's mates or porn stars who are happy to get their tits out for a few dollars.
From the adverts, I was expecting an awesome soundtrack, but again, this movie falls short. There is a small amount of Metal music in the film, which added a little something. The Black Dahlia Murder's heavy riffage works well for the kill scenes. I didn't hear any Lizzy Borden tracks though. I know his My Midnight Things has had a recent music video made up clips from the film, but I didn't notice it in the actual film. You can read my review of his last album HERE. The movie hardly the Metal extravaganza that is was suggested it would be from the article I read.
Die Influencers Die is not the mess that is Danzig's Verotika (click here for review) but it isn't far off. I like what the director tried to do but it just didn't work. I love low budget 80's slashers too, but the elements that made those movies so beloved are missing here. The overall look of the film is over-saturated and horrible, and there's too many shaky camera movements. Add to this the bad dialogue, uninteresting characters (including villains, which is a massive fail), and poor pacing, and it all helps to turn what should have been a quirky, fun Horror flick into an actual nightmare. It's only one hour and fourteen minutes long but it still dragged and I couldn't wait for it to finish.
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