Apple Cider Vinegar

Streaming on: Netflix

Episodes viewed: 6 of 6

“This is a true story based on lies.” It’s the line that opens every episode of glossy new Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar, along with the constant reiteration that Belle Gibson, the suspicious Instagrammer at the centre of it, was not paid for the recreation of it, nor anyone else involved in her story. Often delivered via characters breaking the fourth wall, it’s a perfectly tongue-in-cheek foundation for this strange, still-prescient tale about social media’s proclivity for selling us snake oil.

If you weren’t keeping on top of online influencer drama during the 2010s, Gibson is an Australian blogger who gained millions of followers after sharing she had brain cancer, posting healthy recipes which she said helped her manage the illness. Her popularity led to an app, a partnership with Apple, a book, media appearances, awards from magazines and more – until two journalists uncovered that the charity money she’d promised to cancer-stricken families never materialised, and her diagnoses (and almost everything about her) were confirmed as complete fabrications.

Apple Cider Vinegar’s best decision is in decentring Gibson for a lot of the show’s runtime, and fleshing out the characters around her...

Booksmart breakout and soon-to-be The Last Of Us star Kaitlyn Dever is remarkable as Gibson, thoroughly encapsulating the influencer’s jittery, relentless, sycophantic, oddly charming energy with full-throated commitment, as well as a flawless Aussie accent. Her story is interwoven with others, some based in reality, some entirely fictionalised. There’s Milla (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Belle’s muse, main Instagram competitor and an actual sarcoma sufferer; Chanelle (Aisha Dee), Milla’s friend, who becomes Belle’s manager before turning source to the newspaper trying to uncover the truth; and Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), a terminal cancer patient who gets sucked into Gibson’s rhetoric.

The switching between threads and incessant jumping around in time — between Belle’s younger days as a new mother, the peak of her online fame, and her attempts at crisis management — can get disorientating. The filmmaking is pacy and flashy, though, utilising moments of surrealism, inventive depictions of social media usage, and to-camera moments to keep things fresh.

But Apple Cider Vinegar’s best decision is in decentring Gibson for a lot of the show’s runtime, and fleshing out the characters around her, juxtaposing their true, extremely sad dealings with cancer against her shallow, dangerous, unstoppable pretences about hers. As their narratives become more tragic, Gibson’s — though wild to believe, and littered with its own share of tragedy — ends up far less interesting.

The show also manages to avoid potential harm by avoiding getting too into the details of the diet Milla in particular is evangelising — instead showing empathy for why she would fall down that rabbit hole, and laying bare the stark consequences that can come from rejecting conventional medicine. It requires a certain amount of investment in this type of online controversy to stay engaged in the minutiae of Apple Cider Vinegar – but if that kind of story floats your boat, this polished telling of one of the social-media age’s most egregious examples of deception offers plenty to enjoy.