Michael Dupret directed and wrote the 2019 short #No_Filter, in which a girl named Anna tries new Instagram filters that bring the supernatural into her life*.
Now, he's made this full-length movie. It's from Belgium, but it's in English and won't ever made you think that it's a foreign film.
And you know this movie is such a surprise and delight. I loved every minute of it, because I was so sure it was going to just be a streaming J-horror rip-off and instead this is totally a movie that you would have rented at the store in the 1990s, which is a high compliment.
Anna in Bali (screen name @anna_withaA) is our heroine, played by Hannah Mciver. She's on vacation with her family in Bali where she catches up to her favorite influencer, Scary Scott (screen name @scare_scott), played by Samuel Van der Zwalmen.
He has a challenge where she has to make his friends happy -- his scallowers -- in one minute while trying to frighten him. Anna ups end being really good at this, putting on a mask and sneaking up on him. He tells her that it reminds him of Samara from The Ring and she has no idea who that is. He's nonplussed -- even influencers are having younger people let them down with their lack of pop culture education these days -- but impressed with her.
Here's the only issue I have with the film. It makes an awkward cut here to Scott editing his videos and getting stalked, getting messages where he's stabbing himself in the neck. That video comes true and we cut to the opening credits.
It'd be nice to know how things got spooky so quickly, but the film fixes this later, so stay tuned.
Cut to Anna's bedroom and a pop punk song, where we learn that she's become really popular in school, thanks to her video that was part of Scary Scott's Scary Pic Challenge. A quick conversation shows how quickly today's teens have moved past Mary Black-style urban legends, saying that even if you only scare yourself or your friends, it doesn't matter unless it's online. "If you can't share it, it doesn't exist," Anna tells them.
She's pretty philosophical, even telling her teacher Miss Potts (Dianne Weller), "Cicero said that if the face is the mirror of the mind, the eyes are its interpreters," as she's confronted about the honesty of social media.
Anna feels compelled to keep up her scare videos on social media, putting on face paint to scare her best friend Lauren (screen name @lau_reignn), played by Jasmine Daoud. Together, they work to make filters that distort photos and make them so frightening that they make people physically sick.
But things have to get dark at some point, right?
Jason (Kassim Meesters) is another streamer who is stalking Anna and they're both doing live videos at the same time. Is every one of these kids streaming content? Who is watching it?
Last year, Jason got kicked out of school because he kept sending dick pics to every girl and really went after Lauren, who broke his nose. Now, he's trying to frighten Lauren by blasting loud music in her driveway. She comes outside only to find he's dead in the trunk and has no eyes. Yet when she shares the footage with Lauren, all her friend sees is her trying to seduce Jason. This is where the film starts to deal with Anna becoming an unreliable narrator, as she has no idea if things happening to her are real or not, such as when she tries to confide in Lauren and learns that her best friend is hanging out with Mina(Priya Blackburn), the girl who bullied her, which sends her off the deep end. All she has left are her fans online and many of them refuse to support her, saying that she brought this on herself.
Within the phone, there's now a Dark Anna complete with black eyes who does things like smash her own fingers and stab them just to frighten our heroine. She also shares out photos of Lauren dead in the gym, which causes a further rift between the two friends.
That's when Lauren invites over Tyler (Reiky de Valk)m a guy she has a crush on, who oddly asks to take a shower at her place before she comes on way too strong. She breaks the tension between them by smashing a beer bottle in her hand. He leaves but then starts texting her photos in the bathtub, telling her to come upstairs. As she walks up the steps, Anna looks at herself on the phone and there's an amazing camera effect as the black bars on each side of the phone slide out and the image of Anna is replaced by her darker self, which goes upstairs and decimates Tyler.
Anna tries to escape from her demonic self and as she watches a streamer named silent_jill, she discovers that a surf influencer in Bali killed all of his friends and had the same black eyes. The supernatural influencer explains that in Bali, demons that believe in a balance of light and darkness. The only way to stop the demon is purification by fire, a phrase which she shouts and stares directly at Anna through the screen.
That's when we see a video of Scott and Anna looking at a piece of mirrored glass in a Bali temple, which is how she got possessed. This is broken by her parents calling in a panic as they make their way to the hospital, Lauren calling with the news that Scott's body has been found, Mina dying on Facetime and Anna screaming that everyone has to delete all of their social media and burn their phones, never logging on to their accounts ever again, which is a form of death for influencers.
As her mother attempts to come back and settle her, Anna loses her mind completely -- there's another great shot in here where the Dark Anna remains in the middle of a large mirror while four small mirrors show Anna running in four different directors -- and stabs her mother through the chest. She then knocks herself out by repeatedly slamming a door into her face.
When Lauren comes to save her, she can't find her friend. Instead, she sees a camera setup in the bedroom. When she looks on video, she can see Dark Anna, who grabs her by the hand and brings her into the makeup tutorial where she slices her throat and combines it with egg whites, honey and avocado. She smears her face with the mixture and then starts to eat it.
Lauren starts to close down all of her accounts as she reflects on social media, saying that there are two people in every selfie: One that you look like and the one you really are. In response, the demonic form of her starts to headbutt from inside the monitor and threatens to break out. Anna burns all of her tech in a barrel but at the last moment, pauses to look at her face on the screen and admire herself.
Over the credits, other influencers begin to have black eyes.
No Filter is so much better than it has any right to be. In a year of influencer horror that barely makes the mark, it has something to say, says it well and delivers actual horror -- and gore, too! -- in a tense final act. It's probably the best movie I've seen as a Tubi original.
*It's also similar to another short, Nakia Secrest's Party Make Up by Nikki.
