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Chicago – One of the sauciest new jobs that has arisen from the digital era is that of “Influencer.” Gathering followers, showing off new products and using your personality is the job description in this age of clicks. Writer/director Alex Haughey explores this phenomenon in his new film “Under the Influencer,” which is currently available for download and streaming.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Tori (Taylor Scorse) has been an influencer since shyly going online at age 15 to teach an eyeliner technique. Eventually her personality reaches a large audience, and she officially makes a living as an influencer. Ten years later, she’s still at it, but losing touch with the target audience. Her team gets more desperate, and her personal life starts to infiltrate the online persona, blurring lines in her life. What happens when someone is 25 years old and knows nothing about who she is?

The film is brilliantly balanced between the...

For a year in the the 2010s, filmmaker Alex Haughey worked for a social media influencer — a job he quickly tried to put behind him.

“It was not a good job, but it was an interesting character study of this life outside of reality,” says Haughey, who went on to direct the low-budget supernatural thriller Prodigy, which was released in 2018 and eventually made a bit of a splash when it later streamed on Netflix.

Haughey was looking for his next project after Prodigy, and found it with Under the Influencer. “If you saw Prodigy, you wouldn’t pick this out as my next project,” he notes with a laugh.

Inspiration struck when Haughey happened to watch the 1962 French feature Cleo from 5 to 7, which centers on a singer who, while she lived decades before social media, still reminded him of the influencer he once worked for.

“Everyone handles her and pampers her.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’re highlighting the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Arizona (Jonathan Watson)

It’s hard not to like Danny McBride. Since his first movie role in David Gordon Green’s All The Real Girls to his breakout dark comedy The Foot Fist Way and beyond, the performer operates at his own energetic speed, often elevating whatever he’s in. In Arizona, directed by McBride’s Vice Principals producer Jonathan Watson, the comedian is given plenty to play with early on and he makes the most it. Unfortunately, the majority of the material is worn out in the first thirty minutes, which leaves the final fifty-five. – Dan M. (full review)

Where to Stream: Amazon, iTunes

Barry Lyndon...

Featuring one of my favorite performances in 2018, Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal's Prodigy is coming to Netflix on August 22nd, bringing the superb, claustrophobic character study to a wider audience:

Press Release: The feature film Prodigy makes its Netflix debut on Wednesday, August 22. This “little indie that could” has chugged all the way to the top of the streaming food chain.

Released by Gravitas Ventures in March, the title performed so well On Demand, it caught the eye of the industry giant when it came time to find a more permanent home.

Prodigy is a contained, psychological thriller with some Twilight Zone-esque edge. Here is a brief synopsis:

A discrete branch of the military calls upon psychologist James Fonda to take the case of a dangerous patient, nine-year-old Ellie. As their session begins, the young girl dissects Dr. Fonda's unconventional methods, revealing her genius-level intellect. Only by challenging her...

She’s restrained to a chair, contained under constant watch behind two-way glass, and attached to an electric shocker… and yet the government agency observing her is still worried about security. That’s how dangerous the young girl is in Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal’s new psychological thriller Prodigy, an enthralling mind game of a movie with an emotional, telekinetic core.

When Prodigy begins, time is already running out. The government has brought in child psychologist Fonda (Richard Neil) to evaluate the aforementioned girl, nine-year-old Ellie (Savannah Liles). Ellie is different than other girls her age. She’s a child genius, but her mental strength goes beyond a high Iq and incredible intuition. She can move things with her mind, making everything in the room a potential weapon: the table, the chairs, the pen James uses to take notes—everything.

The government has deemed Ellie too dangerous to exist on her own,...

Superhero movies are not exactly a rarity in today’s film landscape, so it’s always a treat when a film tries to tackle the genre in a different way. That is exactly what Prodigy, a low-budget effort from directing team Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal, aims to do. A mix between The Silence of the Lambs and FX’s Legion, […]...

The need to fully understand and conquer personal trauma, and achieve personal fulfillment, no matter how potentially treacherous the situation can become, is a powerful motivator for many people. That’s not only the chilling instigator for the mysterious and troubled lead characters in the new sci-fi-thriller, ‘Prodigy,’ but also for the drama’s determined filmmakers. Frequent […]

The post Interview: Alex Haughey Talks Prodigy (Exclusive) appeared first on Shockya.com.

MaryAnn’s quick take… This low-budget science-fiction film has an ambition that exceeds its reach, and has nothing to surprise the self-respecting geek a movie like this one is aimed at. I’m “biast” (pro): big Sf fan; I’m desperate for movies about girls and women

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto) women’s participation in this film

(learn more about this)

Psychologist Dr. Fonda (Richard Neil) is called in to a secret military installation to evaluate nine-year-old Ellie (Savannah Liles), who is being held with the kind of high-security measures more suited to the likes of Hannibal Lecter — including the face mask — than a little girl. Fonda is a bit of a maverick, we’re meant to believe, and he hasn’t read the file on Ellie that was provided to him because he’d rather rely on firsthand observation…...

With a shoestring budget, a small but dedicated crew, and an abandoned animal shelter to film in, co-directors Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal created their feature film debut, the sci-fi thriller Prodigy. Centered on a nine-year-old genius with some lethal psychic abilities to go along with her amazing intellect, Prodigy is out now on DVD and VOD platforms, and we caught up with Haughey for a new Q&A feature to discuss the journey to the film's home media release, including changing the main character from a boy to a girl during the casting process, making the transition from short films to a feature-length project, only having one take for a crucial glass-breaking scene, and much more.

For those unfamiliar with Prodigy, we have the official synopsis below, and you can read on for the full Q&A feature with Haughey and visit the film's website and iTunes page for more information.

Guilt is a powerful thing. It can make you act in ways that go against your own survival and yet still ensure those actions are selfishly motivated. You aren’t necessarily acting to help another or have their best interests in mind. You’re goal is to make-up for something you did previously. It’s about feeling better and feeding a misguided notion that you’re somehow the center of attention—the inevitable bringer of unwarranted pain and suffering. Wars have been fought over guilt. Religions have embraced it as strength. But all it truly delivers is a skewed outlook on responsibility. Sometimes things are simply out of your control. Sometimes an accident is exactly that. Guilt is a destroyer too many just can’t ignore. And it drives us straight towards oblivion.

This concept—along with its twin shame—is central to the plot of Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal...