Actor John Cho, who has appeared in projects such as Star Trek, Harold & Kumar and Cowboy Bebop, among others, has joined the cast of Bad Influence and will feature alongside Xochitl Gomez and Madeleine McGraw in the film. The film, which is directed by Jason Perlman, has a script by Brandon Cohen and revolves around McGraw and Gomez‘s characters, Isabelle and Kira, on a road trip for spring break. The unexpected twist occurs when they pick up a hitchhiker named Liam, who is not what he appears to be. That premise places the film in a long tradition of road movies that use the open highway as a stage for escalating trouble, and the decision to build the story around two young women picking up a stranger suggests the film intends to trade on tension and uncertainty rather than pure comedy.
Besides Cho, actors Ethan Suplee, known for American History X, John Q and Chasing Amy, among others, and Arnas Fedaravicius of The Last Kingdom fame, have also boarded the film. The film also has Serrana Su-Ling Bliss as Fei Chang, James Acaster as Stickers, Dee Bradley Baker as Groundbeef and Ncuti Gatwa as Butterwort, among others. That is an unusually eclectic ensemble for a road trip thriller, mixing established character actors with comedians and performers known primarily for television genre work. The character names alone, Stickers, Groundbeef and Butterwort, hint that the film is not aiming for grim realism and may be courting a tone that sits somewhere between suspense and the absurd.
Tony-winning duo Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss are writing original songs for the film. Their involvement is one of the more intriguing details in the announcement, because it suggests Bad Influence is not a straightforward thriller but something closer to a musical or a film with significant musical interludes. Marlow and Moss are best known for their work on stage shows that blend historical subjects with contemporary pop sensibilities, and bringing that sensibility to a road trip story about two teenagers and a mysterious hitchhiker could produce something genuinely unusual. Original songs in a film of this scale also signal ambition, since musical elements raise production costs and complicate marketing, and studios rarely commit to them without a clear creative rationale.
Cho will next feature in Harold & Kumar 4, where he will reprise his role of Harold alongside Kal Penn, who will essay the role of Kumar in the film. It will be directed by creators Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg and is in the development stage. The film series follows the adventures of Asian American best friends, Harold, a mild-mannered investment banker and accountant, and Kumar, a brilliant but unmotivated stoner and medical school dropout, as they encounter absurd obstacles and political satire along the way. The return of that franchise is notable in its own right, since the earlier films became cult favorites precisely because they used lowbrow comedy as a vehicle for sharper observations about race, profiling and assimilation. Whether a fourth installment can recapture that balance after a long gap is an open question, but Cho’s involvement in both projects suggests an actor deliberately moving between commercial franchise work and smaller, stranger material.
For Bad Influence, the cast announcement is a signal of intent more than a guarantee of quality. A film with this many recognizable names and this much tonal ambiguity can either cohere into something distinctive or collapse under the weight of its own eccentricity. The presence of Gomez and McGraw, both of whom have built followings through youth-oriented genre projects, gives the film a built-in audience, while Cho, Suplee and Gatwa add credibility for older viewers. What remains to be seen is whether the finished film leans into the musical elements, treats the hitchhiker premise as straight suspense, or finds a way to blend both without losing its footing. No release date has been announced, and the film’s tone will only become clear once footage arrives.
