The New York Times

Sometimes mockumentaries don’t pull this off, showing us intimate moments that the cameras wouldn’t have captured, but Lady sticks to the bit, and it’s better for it. There are mysteries aplenty, and seemingly around every corner some bizarre object that Lady Isabella waves away when questioned.

As the inquisitive and compassionate Michael, Branagh does some of his most nuanced acting in recent memory. Holbrook is uncanny as Lou — this solidly built man could be knocked over by a feather, such is the extent to which he’s been hollowed out. But the Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass (“Succession”), who plays Mariam Khachaturian, all but walks away with the picture.

The relative restraint and expressive specificity of Plemons’s performance — his character holds his gaze on other people a touch too long, and his smile seems backlit by madness — is a relief, given the rest of the cast’s cartoony turns. It’s a bummer to see actors like Goodman, Stuhlbarg and Riz Ahmed so badly handled.

These are worthy ideas, but in their chaotic cascade, they feel muddled. Worse, The Influencer Project eventually devolves into a rote haunted house gauntlet.

The movie’s attempts to shock are genuinely hilarious, in part because of Nick Antosca’s preposterously perforated screenplay, and dialogue so shamelessly pulpy (“I was his drug, and he was mine”) it would have made Jacqueline Susann cringe.

Corrie is the film’s savior, delivering a tender and sympathetic performance, elevating material that otherwise sags under the weight of so much same-old action movie cyber-stuff.

The intimacy of these interviews is powerful, and creates an unsettling paradox. Even at their most off-puttingly horrific you are drawn into these discussions. That speaks to the power of the filmmaking and of documentary itself and, indeed, while the movie can be shocking, its revelations are similar to what’s been published earlier.

The movie amounts to little more than another item for Netflix’s well-stocked true-crime emporium, at a bargain-basement price.

This is a quiet film, its unobtrusive profile a feature, not a bug.

Fans of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s cerebral horror — like “Creepy” (2016) and “Chime” (2024), which stars Yoshioka — will find some common ground in Boyle’s chiller, though its crackling, crowd-pleasing finale also gives it a high-energy Hollywood gloss. It’s a best-of-both-worlds coup.