True-crime has always sold itself as a public service: a genre that promises insight, accountability, and—occasionally—justice.
Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story asks us to accept that promise again, even as it pushes the form to its most uncomfortable edge.
The result is a slick, unsettling documentary that forces viewers to confront not only one woman’s abuse of authority, but also our own appetite for stories that turn harm into spectacle.
The film’s hook is obvious.
Hildebrandt built a public platform by presenting herself as a moral guide, positioning discipline and “truth” as pathways to personal growth.
The documentary charts how that influence expanded, how followers deferred to her certainty, and how that power was ultimately abused.
The story is disturbing not because it reveals a single shocking act, but because it traces a pattern: charisma paired with ideology, amplified by the attention economy.
As filmmaking, Evil Influencer is efficient and glossy. Interviews are tightly cut; timelines are clear; ominous music does its job without subtlety.
The pacing mirrors social media itself—fast, digestible, and relentlessly compelling.
You can feel the producers’ confidence that outrage will keep you watching. And it probably will.
But that confidence is also the film’s biggest problem.
The documentary spends considerable time reconstructing how Hildebrandt’s ideas spread and how her authority went largely unchallenged.
That context matters.
What feels more questionable is the way the narrative lingers on the “how” of manipulation while offering comparatively little space to examine the systemic failures that allowed it to continue—platform incentives, professional oversight gaps, and the cultural hunger for absolutist answers.
Instead, the film leans heavily into the villain arc.
Hildebrandt is framed as a uniquely dangerous figure, an “evil influencer” whose personal pathology explains everything.
That framing is emotionally satisfying, but intellectually shallow.
It risks suggesting that removing one bad actor solves the problem, when the real danger lies in a system that repeatedly rewards certainty, fear, and moral grandstanding.
There’s also the ethical tension that now shadows much of true-crime: who benefits from retelling this story?
Survivors and families appear largely as supporting evidence rather than central voices with agency.
Their pain is acknowledged, but it is also packaged.
The film avoids graphic detail, which is a relief, yet the cumulative effect is still voyeuristic.
We are invited to be horrified, to feel morally superior, and then to move on.
That’s where the title’s provocation—shall we all vow not to watch true-crime this twisted in 2026?—starts to feel less rhetorical and more urgent.
True-crime didn’t begin as entertainment, but it has become one.
Streaming platforms track completion rates, not ethical outcomes. Algorithms reward shock.
In that ecosystem, documentaries like Evil Influencer risk becoming cautionary tales that quietly perpetuate the very dynamics they condemn: attention as power, outrage as currency.
To be fair, the film does gesture toward accountability.
It emphasizes that influence comes with responsibility and that blind trust can be dangerous.
Yet those lessons are familiar, almost boilerplate, after years of similar documentaries.
What’s missing is a deeper challenge to viewers: not just “be careful who you follow,” but “why do we keep watching this at all?”
The most unsettling moment in Evil Influencer isn’t any revelation about Hildebrandt.
It’s the realization that the documentary itself functions like the platforms it critiques—drawing us in with a promise of truth while profiting from our attention.
The cycle continues, only the villain changes
So should we vow to stop watching true-crime this twisted in 2026?
A blanket boycott is unlikely, and perhaps unrealistic.
Stories of wrongdoing can educate, warn, and even prevent future harm when handled with care.
But Evil Influencer makes a strong case for higher standards.
Fewer villain caricatures. More systemic analysis.
More survivor-centered storytelling.
And less indulgence in the thrill of moral panic.
If the genre is going to survive its own excesses, it needs to evolve beyond shock and toward responsibility. Until then, watching Evil Influencer feels less like bearing witness and more like participating in a loop we already know is broken.
