I didn’t hate it. In fact, The Influencer Project is the closest a film has come to meeting my expectations in a very long time. I genuinely enjoyed it, but its premise and delivery are fraught with issues, and the never-ending Inception of filming devices becomes a tragic and unfortunate distraction.

I immediately bought into the set-up, although I’m not entirely sure why it was presented as being inspired by true events, or why there was a content warning beforehand. Are we really at the point where a thriller can’t reflect real life without first giving away its contents?

The film follows a young woman embarking on a trip to Copenhagen, accompanied by a documentary crew and seemingly endless brands gagging for her to come into contact with their products. Fine-ish. The problem is that so much of the film becomes repetition and filler as we flick between her social media content and the documentary itself.

You can see The Blair Witch Project in all of this, unsurprisingly given the involvement of two of its original filmmakers, Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale. But where Blair Witch succeeded by committing to the limitations of its format, The Influencer Project seems determined to escape them. Establishing shots appear that belong to neither the documentary nor the influencer’s content, immediately pulling the audience out of any remaining realism.

I think the filmmakers should have been braver and committed to telling the entire story through the influencer’s own footage, across various formats. There’s one layer too many at play here, and I’m not sure whether they were trying to be clever and fundamentally failed, or simply got lost in their own ambitions.

As events escalate and the documentary crew begins to disappear, the framing becomes increasingly difficult to justify. I understand the livestreams, but where is the rest of this footage supposed to have come from? Is this found footage, or have the filmmakers neglected the fundamental world-building required to pull something like this off? It feels lazy, particularly when the solution seems so obvious.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that the final act is incredibly strong, delivering some impressive twists, turns and punches. I enjoyed the narrative arc and genuinely couldn’t see where it was going at times. Even when I’d nailed the conclusion in my head, the film somehow gaslit me into believing it simply couldn’t be true, and I still ended up shocked.

The acting is great, too. Everyone feels believable, and when the filmmaking becomes less complicated, there are some excellent moments of tension and beautifully executed fight sequences. Unfortunately, the inconsistencies become most glaring in the final act, and I couldn’t entirely see beyond them. Yet the script and performances are strong enough for the twists to land regardless, which says something about the talent behind the film.

Perhaps there’s an argument that the simpler moments become even more powerful because of the many layers surrounding them, despite those layers not really working overall. Certainly, the film is at its best when it stops worrying about how its story is being presented and concentrates on telling it.

Ultimately, The Influencer Project is a genuinely compelling thriller that comes remarkably close to being something special. With a little more restraint and a clearer sense of what we’re actually supposed to be watching, I really could have been singing its praises.