Clickbait: Unfollowed review.
Influencer horror is back! Another Tubi original that delves into the horrific world of influencer culture.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Clickbait: Unfollowed
Directed by Katherine Barrell and Melanie Scrofano
Written by Katherine Barrell and Melanie Scrofano
Starring Roberto Kyle, Jessica Stanley, Charlie Bouguenon, Ashleigh van der Hoven, Shermin Hassan and Luke Volker
Clickbait: Unfollowed Review
Two of our most common discussions lately have centered around a subgenre and a platform. The subgenre is made up…but we needed a way to classify the slew of incoming similarly themed movies. I’m talking, of course, about influencer horror. There’s too many to count at this point. The last couple of years has seen a boom period of horror (usually slashers) directed at the low hanging fruit that is influencer culture. The platform, just as predictably, is Tubi. Tubi remains a go to for a wide variety of ad supported horror movies. And it continues to struggle to forge an identity for its Tubi Original brand.
We’ve been over these enough that we’re just going to slide on past rehashing the finer details of each. Clickbait: Unfollowed carries enough traits of each discussion that it will come up organically anyway. If you’ve followed either topic…you’ll recognize that means both good and bad things. Tipped towards the latter.
A group of influencers are invited to take part in a competition with a very lucrative prize. The catch is that only one can win the prize…and survive. The competition, naturally, involves gaining followers while completing influencer related tasks. If that sounds familiar it’s because it is the same plot as Deinfluencer. One of the problems with that movie was a lack of budget to pull off any of what it was attempting to do. Clickbait: Unfollowed has more to work with. It expands the scope of the story…but still misses the opportunity to provide increasingly wild rounds of competition.
Where it finds some success, however, is by giving its antagonist(s) a lot more personality. Sofia (Katherine Barrell) targets the vacuous set of bottom feeders with the fervor of someone chewed up and spit out by the industry. I call her that antagonist…but the truth is you’re more likely to root for her than, at least, half of her targets. Clickbait: Unfollowed gives us a full range of terrible people brought to the killing fields. Phonies with huge egos and no applicable skills.
But not all of them. There are two people who arrive at the mansion who don’t belong there. They give too much “survivor” energy to ignore. That’s the norm in slashers…but one makes an early move by Clickbait: Unfollowed impossible to believe. It works in one way. To show how awful one character in the movie is. The characters are where Clickbait: Unfollowed has most of its fun. There are different levels of deplorable at play. It makes the competitions a bit more fun. It’s so easy to root against (or, in one case, for) people that you want to see the punishment for a failed challenge.
The challenges involve doing things that influencers do. Motivational speeches, phony apologies, selling products. When they go live on their channels…a growing follower count will keep them alive. Failing the challenge results in elimination. In every sense of the word. Breaking the rules will also result in elimination. These influencers are particularly bad at following the rules.
Deaths in Clickbait: Unfollowed range from gunshots to elaborate blood draining systems. One person is blown up in a way I’ve never seen before. The goal is to have some fun with it despite having to use smoke and mirrors on the actual kill shots. Some are wonkier than others…but they fit the tone of the movie.
The cast of influencers include Ax$el (Charlie Bouguenon), Ami (Shermin Hassan), Kyle (Luke Volker), Gaia (Ashleigh van der Hoven), Peach (Roberto Kyle), Julie (Jessica Stanley) and her son Parker. They range in likability from completely innocent to absolutely horrid. Parker doesn’t even want to be a part of this world. Julie forces him to make unboxing videos to try and make him a star. She is the worst of the bunch. Peach, on the other hand, is the only adult who also doesn’t want to be a part of this. An influencer, yes, but the rare decent human being presented in Clickbait: Unfollowed.
As with most influencer horror movies, enjoyment comes down to how much you want to see phony, vapid people meet their demise. Clickbait: Unfollowed adds more than most attempts by presenting an intriguing antagonist. There is more to this competition than, say, Deinfluencer attempted. It’s played for some madcap fun from the perspective of Sofia and her unknown accomplice. For the most part…Clickbait: Unfollowed is more of what you expect from the non-stop stream of influencer horror movies. Like most Tubi Originals…it carries a fun tone despite an inability to deliver the scope that it wants to.
Scare Value
Some influencer horror fatigue notwithstanding…Clickbait: Unfollowed goes the extra mile in making its characters as unlikable as possible. The downside is that you’ll be able to predict who will survive almost immediately. Movies that set out to punish and expose influencer culture are becoming a dime a dozen…but this Tubi original does it with a song in its heart.
2.5/5
Clickbait: Unfollowed Link
Streaming on Tubi
