Apart from “thriller”, and it is a superlative thriller, it’s quite difficult to define what Chloe is all about. It seems – seems – to be a story about a very strange woman, someone who is part-stalker, part-Munchausen’s syndrome sufferer, part-fantasist, part-succubus, and entirely terrifying. An “interesting” central character, then. You really do fear for those who come into contact with any of her various identities…
Played with a wonderful barmy intensity by Erin Doherty (who you may recognise as the rather more one-dimensional Princess Anne in The Crown), Becky Green is a single twenty-something woman still living with her mum. She works as a secretarial temp, her bathroom has mould, her nerves are strained because of her mother’s mild dementia, and, as is apparently routine these days, she instead lives a more glam life vicariously through social media.
Her smartphone is the first thing she turns to in the morning, and she falls asleep at night scrolling through Instagram. She is obsessively “influenced”, as they say, by one particular personality, with her perfect meals and perfect friends, Chloe Fairbourne. Or, rather, the late Chloe, who we discover died by suicide. Becky’s obsession with Chloe is then transferred to Chloe’s friends and associates who all, naturally, feature on her social media and are easily traceable and contactable via the web.
Becky sets out to find and infiltrate “IRL”, Chloe’s network of nice, posh, wealthy professionals, using various aliases, a far-fetched story about being a gallery curator fresh in from Tokyo, and an impressive amount of guile.
She even ends up sleeping with one of them, and you begin to fear that much worse will befall the whole gang, particularly Chloe’s shy, vulnerable widower Elliot (Billy Howle), who may as well have the word “PREY” tattooed on his forehead.
At one point, the skint Becky is so obsessed with blagging her way into private views and drinks receptions, she seems to be testing Quentin Crisp’s quip that, provided one could exist on peanuts and champagne, one could easily live by going to every cocktail party, première and first night to which one was invited. Except she’s not invited.
Why Becky does this, though, is the mystery. For the viewer, the story is occluded because there are tearful moments, mysterious phone calls, imagined sequences and flashbacks that suggest Chloe and Becky knew each other in real life from their schooldays, and maybe still did when Chloe died. It’s almost like Becky and Chloe lived parallel and dual lives, one “real”, the other imagined or virtual.
Chloe is very much a thriller for our time, and our near future, because it’s like a preview of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook “Metaverse” – intriguing, repulsive and thrilling in equal measure, and something you really do need to see.
