‘Bad Influence’ (2025) Netflix Movie Review - Could Have Been More Gripping

In Bad Influence, a moody, slow-burn thriller with a decadent sheen, danger wears designer sunglasses and flirts poolside. The film opens with Eros (Alberto Olmo), a brooding, sharply handsome ex-con, being released from prison into the glossy, enigmatic care of Bruce (Enrique Arce), a wealthy, controlling patriarch who simply tells him: “You work for me now.” As they speed off in Bruce’s Porsche, we’re propelled into a world of cold opulence and secret intentions.

Eros’s assignment is to shadow Bruce’s high school senior daughter, Reese (Rochera), who’s been receiving vaguely threatening messages from an anonymous stalker. Bruce’s sprawling mansion is a sterile fortress, kept alive only by uniformed staff, untouched décor, and the melancholic rhythm of Reese swimming solitary laps in the pool. Eros, assigned as a bodyguard but unacknowledged as one, blends into her daily life like an unspeakable shadow. He looms at her prestigious private school and haunts the edges of her dance studio, a silent chaperone with eyes that burn with forbidden interest.

Reese and her best friend Lily (Sara Ariño) are initially indifferent to Eros, but the mystery of his outsider status soon draws them in. He’s not just older and dangerous—he's from another world entirely. When Eros introduces Reese to Peyton (Mirela Balić) and Diego (Farid Bechara), friends from his juvenile detention days, the trio slips into a world of light vandalism and late-night rebellion. Reese, a dedicated ballet dancer trying to pirouette her way into prestigious companies, finds in Eros an intoxicating contrast to her structured life.

The romance that blossoms between Eros and Reese is heated, inevitable, and, of course, strictly forbidden by Bruce, though Bruce is frequently absent, presumably off performing vague rich-guy duties. Their physical chemistry crackles, especially during moonlit poolside scenes that play like slowed-down perfume ads with a darker undercurrent. However, desire is tangled up with resentment, and class differences create subtle but constant tension.

Where Bad Influence falters is in its own flirtation with narrative clarity. The central mystery of Reese’s stalker simmers but never boils. The messages—cryptic lines like “Sometimes you have to pay for other people’s mistakes”—appear infrequently and without escalating menace. The plot’s pacing is glacial, its reveals teased out so slowly that their eventual arrival barely registers.

Hints of deeper intrigue—Did Bruce and Eros know each other before? Why was Eros chosen?—remain half-whispered threads. Instead, the emotional center drifts toward Peyton, a magnetic wild card whose influence begins to rival and distort Eros’s place in Reese’s life. If Eros is a mystery, Peyton is pure provocation.

Bad Influence thrives on mood and surfaces—gorgeous lighting, suggestive silences, and bodies in motion. But beneath the stylish veneer, it leaves too many blanks unfilled. It's a film where the danger is aesthetic, the tension more romantic than threatening. Seductive, yes. Substantial? Not quite.

Final Score- [6/10]
Reviewed by - Neerja Choudhuri
Follow @NeerjaCH on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times