Come enjoy the new and improved way of being held against your will by psychotics in the stupendous indie masterpiece Influence, written and directed by auteur to be reckoned with Ryan Moore. Patricia (Cheyenne Perez), who previously spent time in a mental hospital in Toledo, is trying to make it as a writer/director in L.A. When she isn’t paying the bills by editing the social media posts for local influencer Melissa (Emily Hall), Patricia is pounding out screenplays to send out. Repeatedly, she receives one form letter rejection after another. One day, while she is crying in her car, she is greeted by another influencer that she recognizes, Ashley (Grace Kaufman). Ashley asks Patricia if she could move her car, as she is blocking her in. After a much-needed small chat to feel connected with humanity again, Patricia moves her car for Ashley.
Ashley (Grace Kaufman) sits with bound wrists in a tense scene from Influence.
“Patricia, who previously spent time in a mental hospital in Toledo, is trying to make it as a writer/director in L.A.”
She then follows Ashley home to see where she lives. Inspired by their meeting, Patricia runs home and writes what she imagines would be the perfect part for Ashley. She prints out her screenplay and leaves a copy on Ashley’s front step when she doesn’t answer the door. She checks later on and sees that the screenplay has been taken inside. Excited, she goes to the coffee shop she knows Ashley likes to go to, practicing how she will approach her the whole drive over. She sits at a table near Ashley, getting ready to reveal herself as the author of the script. That is when she hears Ashley on the phone with Taylor (KT Kent), asking her about what the police can do about some stalker leaving a script on her doorstep. Patricia slinks off, as nothing is going according to plan. So she comes up with a new plan to get Ashley to make her movie: Patricia goes to a pawn shop to buy a gun.
As impossible as it is to believe, John Carpenter’s The Thing flopped hard at the box office, despite now being seen as the greatest sci-fi horror movie ever made. The biggest drag on critical acceptance was how dare Carpenter remake a film that was originally directed by the great Howard Hawks. Some directors have reputations so huge that no one believes anything they did can be approached, much less topped. However, watching Hawks’s The Thing From Another World today reveals a clunky, dull picture that the 1982 version outshines on every level imaginable. I bring this up because writer/director Moore has done the exact same thing with his film Influence. And like Carpenter, Moore dared to improve on the work of the film director who is arguably the most respected American director alive: Martin Scorsese.
"…takes on Scorsese and outplays him on his own court."
