Netflix’s marquee series has finally wrapped its epic story with Stranger Things season 5, and with all of the hype around the franchise and the finale, you’d be excused for missing other releases on the streamer. That includes Netflix’s newest true crime release, which wasted no time in making an impact on the service and has become an instant hit on the Top 10 movie charts.
Videos by ComicBook.com
According to FlixPatrol, the new true crime film Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story has taken the no. 1 spot on the Netflix Top 10 Movies chart, passing Man on Fire, Picture Perfect 2, Wrath of Man, Ford v Ferrari, and even the recently returned Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Once you start to learn about the details of the documentary and the lives it affected, you can understand why the documentary captured so much attention.
What Is Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story About?
Evil Influencer is a true story documentary about the crimes of Jodi Hildebrandt and Ruby Franke, who were arrested for suspicion of child abuse after two of Franke’s children were rescued from Hildebrandt’s home. Footage of this is shown early in the documentary, and from there, the film explores when Franke and Hildebrandt first met and the twisted journey to their eventual arrest.
Franke was an influencer who filmed a vlog with her then-husband Kevin Franke about raising their six children. After Franke met Hildebrandt, who was a family counselor and the founder of life-coaching organization ConneXions, Hildebrandt became a big part of Franke’s life, and as her influence grew, the children grew more unsafe. That ultimately led to the day when Franke’s 12-year-old son went to a neighbor’s house to ask to be taken to the police, and it was revealed that he had been held captive with his 9-year-old sister at Hildebrandt’s home.
The story made big news at the time, but much of the media attention was aimed at Franke. Director Skye Borgman told TUDUM that “I’d heard about this story, and it was really just ‘Ruby Franke, Ruby Franke, Ruby Franke,’” As Borgman started to dig into the story though, it was actually Hildebrandt who was at the center of the story.
“Just the simple fact that this little boy escapes from Jodi Hildebrandt’s house, where the abuse is happening — not from his mom’s house,” Borgman said, was the snowball at the top of the hill. “That, to me, was the simplest and the most diabolical part of the story.”
Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story is now streaming on Netflix.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Image Courtesy of Netflix
