Clout

Actor-turned director Seth Gamble made this incoherent feature (also called a "series" for purposes of showing it cut up into four segments on the Wicked website, followed a month or so later by four additional scenes) about the phenomenon of instant "success" via social media exposure, and missed the boat. Perhaps due to the current trend to put storytelling in the background in favor of very lengthy XXX scenes in Adult Cinema, the movie is unconvincing and half-baked.

A simple story of mechanic Isiah Maxwell becoming an overnight sensation over the internet is botched immediately, by omitting the scenes (perhaps scripted but not shot?) whereby this happens. He's called to a mansion to fix a motorcycle by hot social media influencer Jewelz Blu, and is sent packing when he intervenes to stop the bullying of menial servant Anna Claire Clouds.

Inexplicably, Maxwell becomes an instant internet celebrity (somehow) after this incident, and transparently venal talent agent Codey Steele swoops in to try and exploit Maxwell, promising to make him rich.

Clouds turns out to be the ex-lover of Seth Gamble, a gangster-styled owner of strip clubs, who had dropped her from his roster of girls (sex workers or strippers, I guess) and blackballed her, accounting for her current impoverished state. Several tedious and pointless sex scenes later, she makes Maxwell see the light.

If this were intended to show insidious corruption, made easier by the growing power of the internet and its self-employed influencers, it fails miserably. But taken as just porn entertainment, Seth stumbles both script-wise and by poor photography, starting off with an annoying soft-focus and blurry 40-minute sex scene flashback (starring himself and Clouds) in the first segment, followed by dimly lit XXX scenes in the rest of the feature. Big-name cast is underutilized.

The concluding four scenes (with same cast) are listed as "Clout 2", which I will also review.