Chloe Wallace’s “Mala Influencia” (“Bad Influence,” 2025) is an immediate trainwreck. It’s one of those movies that force-fits further stupidity into already inane, recycled plots. The plotting is so harebrained, you catch yourself wondering why the film was greenlit. You will be assailed with existential panic about the nature of movies today, churned into junk meals in the age of streamers. It’s not just supreme laziness but an arrogance to feed audiences the tawdriest bit of intelligence or dignifying material. All the actors are bland, sleepwalk through their parts, and seem to have just been given a brief to look pretty and forget everything else. There’s no sincere conflict, or sensual surges in dramatic crests and troughs.
Where a raw erotic energy could have added spice to the film, it’s replaced with a dry, derivative, personality-free narrative that has no spunk in its leads or a taste for unpredictability. Instead, it’s sorely lacking in conviction, nuance, and provocation. A film like this needs a shock of heady rebellion. This is tamer and insipid, coyer than it’d like to admit. It drags the film into a slump.
Mala Influencia (Bad Influence, 2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
“Mala Influencia,” written by Wallace and Diana Muro, has no reason to be mounted into a film, springing as it did from a fan’s dizzy, lovesick imagination. The film doesn’t genuflect the excess in its source into something half bearable or even remotely persuasive. Instead, it’s a string of highly contrived situations, raining with unbelievable ridiculousness and lack of earnest commitment. There’s the running thread of atoning for the sins of parents, children mending the fault lines, all wrapped in a cheesy romance that long overstays the course. None of the perspectives makes sense or accrues any tantalising edge. What transpires is sheer boredom.
The film is about the relationship between a bodyguard and the girl he’s hired to look over. Of course, there are disasters, unexpected developments, a weak-kneed approach, and a softening of the heart where it’s not really welcome. The film opens in a prison, where Eros (Alberto Olmo) is offered a way out by a visitor. It’s a rich businessman, Bruce (Enrique Arce), who hires Eros to oversee the security of his daughter, Reese (Elea Rochera). Apparently, somebody has been stalking Reese for months, but she’s on frosty terms with her father and wouldn’t confide in him.
So it’s up to Eros to break into the slew of secrets Reese might be holding close, so as to successfully protect her from any conceivable threat. Eros has to prove himself capable of the responsibility entrusted. He helps her escape by a narrow shave from danger at the school ball when a spotlight is about to crash on her. He rescues her right in the nick of time. Eros’ friends, Diego and Peyton, are not very trusting of his new job, having major reservations, but Eros moves into Bruce’s house, shadowing Reese at all times. Of course, she’s unhappy with her privacy being curtailed. But her dad wouldn’t hear of it. Bruce insists on Eros being around all the time.
Eros also takes admission in Reese’s school, embedding the constant intimacy. That Reese has a bodyguard causes some ridicule in social circles. Despite it, the two experience a tightening sexual attraction towards each other. They can’t deny it or muffle it. Bruce warns them to maintain distance, also because of a secret from the past. Reese is withheld from talking to Eros for a while, which only further intensifies the sexual longing that culminates in a thrust for realisation and actualisation. Eros shields her from her ex-boyfriend, Raul. It accelerates the attraction between Eros and Reese.
Reese also discovers Eros is quite coveted at school and that Peyton, one of his friends, is attracted to him. Finally, at a party where Reese’s friend, Lily, and Diego, Eros’ friend, hook up, the central duo give in to their throbbing urges. But before the intimacy can deepen, it’s halted by a threat. Slowly, secrets spill into the centre of the stage. The past gains primacy. The two discover that Reese’ stalking is tied to Bruce’s deeds from the past.
Eros had found a picture of his parents at Bruce’s office. He’d lost his parents at an accident and at the group home where he grew up. The sponsor was Bruce. He’d been paying for Eros’ upkeep, education. It was then Eros knew of Bruce. The linkages had never been clear. Now it all becomes lucid, transparent, revealed in a slow, shocked daze.
Bruce and his wife knew Eros’ parents intimately. They were aiming to team up as business partners, and it all seemed to head positively until disaster struck. At Bruce’s restaurant, there was a major fire that broke out, killing Eros’ parents. Only Bruce survived. Eros had been made to think his parents died because of him. He’s stuck in guilt because of that. Bruce has been paying for Eros’ upkeep as a way of penance because his restaurant didn’t have adequate fire safety provisions in place.
Mala Influencia (Bad Influence, 2025) Movie Ending Explained:
Who’s the stalker?
It’s flagged early that Raul is the stalker. He has got his vendetta, an axe to grind. He has the motive, but his alibi checks him out entirely. Instead, the needle of suspicion points directly at Peyton, who’d lied about her job and actually works as a cleaner at Reese’s school. It turns out Peyton’s mother used to work at Bruce’s restaurant and had also died in the fire.
Since then, Peyton had plotted revenge against Bruce. She’d planted herself in Reese’s vicinity, though it’s not underlined whether she’d have done real harm to Reese or just dangled empty threats. Eros tries to persuade Peyton out of revenge and bitterness, that there’s room for kindness and tenderness, a way out of hate. But Peyton shoots Bruce dead. She’s then arrested. Reese’s mother had also died in the fire, but she still misses her father. There’s the measure of a happy ending as Reese gets into a dance company and Eros joins her on stage, suggesting a twinkle of romance and relief.
