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Two friends driving home for spring break stop for a hitchhiker. That is the setup for Bad Influence, a young adult horror film that has cast Madeleine McGraw, Xochitl Gomez and Jack Champion, with Jason Perlman directing from a script by Brandon Cohen. Deadline broke the news on Thursday.
McGraw plays Isabelle and Gomez plays Kira, the pair in the car, while Champion is the hitchhiker the logline describes as not what he seems. The film is billed as a modern-day Thelma & Louise fueled by female rage. Debbie Liebling, Joel David Moore and Zachary Burgess are producing, and no distributor is attached yet.
All Three Leads Have Horror Credits Already
McGraw played Gwen Blake in The Black Phone and came back for Black Phone 2, the sequel whose trailer leaned hard on the supernatural side of the story.
Champion played Ethan Landry in Scream VI, and he is also Spider in Avatar: The Way of Water.
Gomez is best known as America Chavez in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but she has worked in horror as well, starring in Felipe Vargas’s short Hive when it played Screamfest in 2024.
One of the Producers Has His Own Horror Résumé
Joel David Moore, one of the three producers, has his own history in the genre. He played Ben in the 2006 slasher Hatchet and returned for a cameo in Hatchet III. He is also Norm Spellman in the Avatar films, which puts him and Champion in the same franchise.