Life Support, Plot Flatline
There’s something uniquely depressing about watching a horror movie where the scariest thing on screen is the runtime. The Influence (La influencia) is that movie. It’s based on a Ramsey Campbell novel, features a comatose witch-matriarch hooked up to machines in a crumbling family mansion, and somehow still manages to be less frightening than checking your bank balance.
On paper, this should be gold:
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Creepy rural house? Check.
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Poisonous family history? Check.
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Evil grandma who refuses to die? Check, and honestly, iconic.
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A nine-year-old girl ripe for possession? Horror 101.
In execution, though, The Influence is like being stuck in a haunted house run by people who keep stopping mid-scare to check their phones.
The Return of the Repressed (and Also Boredom)
Alicia (Manuela Vellés) returns to the old family home she fled as a child, dragging along her husband Mikel and their daughter Nora. She claims she’s there to “rebuild her life.” The house strongly disagrees.
The place is exactly what you’d expect from “traumatic childhood hell mansion” real estate: dark, damp, overtly hostile, probably sans functioning smoke detectors. Within a few minutes of arrival, the correct response would clearly be, “Nope,” followed by a U-turn and a listing on Airbnb titled “Charming Rural Ruin, Potential Murder Vibes.”
Instead, Alicia decides the best environment for her nine-year-old is a house containing:
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Her deeply cursed, comatose mother Victoria, kept alive by machines and pure spite.
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Generations of unresolved trauma.
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Enough witchcraft residue to make Hereditary look like a Disney pilot.
Alicia, to her credit, is visibly stressed. Unfortunately, the script mostly gives her two modes: wide-eyed anxiety and staring into middle distance while tragic piano plays. Traumatized final girl energy is fine, but after a while you start rooting for the matriarch in the coma, because at least she has presence.
Grandma Won’t Die and the Movie Won’t Either
The central hook here is good: Victoria, the toxic matriarch, is in a coma but refuses to let go, clinging to life support and occult power like they’re a two-for-one sale. She is that relative who weaponizes guilt from beyond the grave—except she hasn’t actually reached the “grave” part yet.
The film could’ve leaned into this in a big way: a grotesque portrait of generational abuse, of a mother’s influence literally and figuratively poisoning multiple generations. Instead, Victoria spends most of the movie being… furniture. Occasionally the machines beep. Occasionally her eyes move. Sometimes subtlety is powerful; here it just feels like no one had the budget or ideas to do anything more interesting.
We’re told she was possessive and cruel, dabbling in the occult and controlling the family with fear. We’re shown a lot less. The flashbacks and reveals drizzle in, but they never really build to that satisfying “oh, THAT’S why she’s a nightmare” payoff. It’s like hearing about a terrifying urban legend and then finally meeting the monster only to realize she mostly just sends passive-aggressive WhatsApps.
Nora: Tiny Vessel, Minimal Personality
Nora, Alicia’s daughter, is your standard-issue Horror Child: cute, curious, and apparently never taught the “don’t touch cursed things in creepy houses” rule. She wanders around the estate like she’s auditioning for a “before” shot in a demonologist’s slide deck.
Of course, grandma’s lingering influence begins to seep into Nora. Of course, strange behavior follows. Of course, nobody moves out. You can practically hear the screenplay checking off tropes:
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Stares at nothing: ✅
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Talks to unseen presence: ✅
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Sudden mood swings: ✅
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Parents do absolutely nothing effective: ✅✅✅
The problem isn’t that it’s cliché—clichés can be fun—it’s that the movie never bothers to make Nora feel like a person before turning her into a conduit. Possession only hits hard when you feel like something specific is being overwritten. Here, it’s more like watching an app update.
Emotional Trauma, Now with Less Emotion
The core of The Influence is supposed to be Alicia’s unresolved trauma and fractured relationship with her sister Sara and the rest of the clan. We get glimpses: bitterness, resentment, half-explained wounds. The ingredients are there for a brutal family horror stew.
But the film mostly treats these relationships like decorative props—nice to have in the background while the “real” horror (wiggly shadows, spooky whispers, medical equipment malfunctioning on cue) gets the spotlight. You’re told this family is twisted, broken by Victoria’s tyranny. You never really feel it in a sustained way.
It’s like being promised a rich, layered psychological horror and then watching someone hang up a “Toxic Family This Way” sign and call it character development.
Pacing: Possessed by a Snail
If you enjoy movies where you keep checking the progress bar thinking, “Surely we’re near the end,” only to realize you’re barely halfway through, you are in for a feast.
The Influence moves with the urgency of a sedated sloth. Scenes stretch on longer than they need to, not to build dread but to politely waste your time. People wander hallways. People whisper about doing things they will not actually do for another 30 minutes. There are portentous shots of the house, of Victoria in bed, of Nora being ominous, none of which accumulate into anything resembling escalating tension.
Atmosphere is great. Atmosphere without momentum is… fog. And this movie is foggy as hell.
Scares by Algorithm
The horror beats in The Influence feel like they were selected by an AI trained exclusively on average streaming content and the phrase “kinda spooky.”
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Lights flicker.
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Strange things move in the background.
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A character gasps at something just out of frame.
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The score hums sadly.
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Repeat.
There’s very little imagination in how the scares are staged or paid off. You rarely get that delicious, specific image that burrows into your brain and makes you uneasy in your own house later. Instead, you get generic “Netflix Horror Screenshot #12.”
Add to that some occasionally murky editing and the result is a film that doesn’t so much terrify as politely remind you that horror is technically happening.
From Ramsey Campbell to… This
Knowing this is an adaptation of a Ramsey Campbell novel is almost cruel. Campbell’s work thrives on unsettling detail, creeping dread, the sense that something is fundamentally wrong with reality itself. The movie, meanwhile, often feels content to gesture vaguely at wrongness and assume that’s enough.
You can see flashes where the source material is straining to break through: the idea of “influence” as a literal and metaphysical force, the way an abusive parent’s presence lingers even in a body that’s little more than a husk, the way children become battlegrounds for unresolved adult nightmares.
But instead of committing to that psychological horror, the film oscillates between family drama and lazy supernatural beats, never fully satisfying either camp. It’s like getting the diet version of a story that should’ve been full-calorie dread.
Final Diagnosis: Flatline Horror
In the end, The Influence is the horror equivalent of hospital food: technically functional, vaguely shaped like what you ordered, and utterly lacking flavor. The cast does what they can; the house is nicely oppressive; the premise is solid. But the execution is so bland, so hesitant, that even the evil comatose witch-grandma can’t save it.
If you’re an extremely forgiving fan of slow-burn European horror and you just want something spooky-ish on in the background while you scroll your phone, this might work as atmospheric wallpaper. If you’re looking for something that really digs into generational trauma, possession, or the corrosive power of a controlling parent, you’re better off rewatching literally anything else in that lane.
The film’s final lesson, unintentionally delivered: sometimes the most frightening “influence” is what a mediocre adaptation can do to a good idea.
