‘Apple Cider Vinegar’ Review: Kaitlyn Dever Leads Netflix’s Wellness-Scammer Saga, but the Series Struggles to Deliver Depth

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Feb 7

Written By Jonathan P. Moustakas

Kaitlyn Dever shines as wellness

scammer Belle Gibson, but the series fails to dive deep into

the cultural toxicity behind wellness grifts

Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar tackles the true story of Belle Gibson, the Australian influencer who fabricated claims of curing her terminal brain cancer through clean eating and natural remedies. Belle’s rise to fame in the early 2010s came through Instagram and a wellness mini-empire built on deceit. With Kaitlyn Dever delivering a layered performance as the charismatic but manipulative Gibson, the six-episode series seeks to dissect the dangers of pseudoscience and influencer culture. However, despite its timely premise, the show falls short of offering a compelling narrative or incisive critique.

The scam at the heart of Apple Cider Vinegar is outrageous, and the series makes sure viewers are aware of it from the outset. It opens with Belle embroiled in her downfall, desperately pleading with her crisis PR manager (Phoenix Raei) to salvage her reputation. From there, the series jumps back and forth across her rise to social media stardom and the eventual exposure of her fraud, offering flashbacks to pivotal moments in her life and career.

Dever, once again showcasing her acting range, nails Belle’s duality: her polished public persona full of false humility, extravagant charm, and teary confessions, contrasted with her manipulative private self. Belle’s ability to ingratiate herself with those she needs, including her editor (Catherine McClements) and her boyfriend (Ashley Zukerman), is masterfully portrayed. Yet, despite Dever’s strong performance, the series doesn’t delve deep enough into the psychological nuances of her character. Critical moments in Belle’s deception—such as the decision to fake her cancer or the inspiration behind her app, “The Whole Pantry”—feel underexplored, leaving gaps in her transformation from a seemingly ordinary woman into one of Australia’s most notorious con artists

Where Apple Cider Vinegar attempts to set itself apart is in its depiction of a broader toxic ecosystem that fuels scammers like Belle. Alycia Debnam-Carey’s Milla, an earnest influencer battling a terminal illness, serves as Belle’s counterpoint. Milla genuinely believes in the pseudoscientific treatments she promotes, drawing hope from her dietary regimen while encouraging her followers to adopt the same. Yet, while Milla’s storyline offers moments of poignancy, the character’s emotional complexity is undercut by a lack of narrative focus. She is reduced to a sympathetic foil to Belle rather than given room to develop as a fully realized character in her own right.

Aisha Dee’s Chanelle, who bridges Belle and Milla’s worlds as a mutual friend and assistant, adds another intriguing thread that feels frustratingly unexplored. Chanelle plays a pivotal role in exposing Belle’s lies and holds significant personal stakes in both narratives, yet the series gives little attention to her perspective.

One of the series’ smartest angles lies in its critique of the societal conditions that enable figures like Belle. Milla’s storyline shines a light on how patients disillusioned by dismissive medical professionals can become vulnerable to the promises of “wellness warriors.” This desperation creates fertile ground for grifters like Belle, who exploit people’s need for hope and control during crises. The media and Instagram culture also take their share of the blame. The show portrays journalists eager to lionize figures like Belle without scrutiny and the social media ecosystem that amplifies their voices through curated feeds and algorithms.

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Visually, Apple Cider Vinegar captures the aesthetic of mid-2010s Instagram, complete with emoji-filled comment streams and filtered images. The stylistic flourishes mirror the fragmented nature of social media storytelling, where narratives are consumed in rapid, disjointed bursts. However, the show’s slick visuals inadvertently invite comparisons to previous scammer-focused dramas like Inventing Anna and The Dropout. This comparison ultimately works against Apple Cider Vinegar, which lacks the sharp characterization and narrative momentum that made those series stand out.

While Dever’s portrayal of Belle is compelling, the choice to center her perspective limits the potential for more nuanced storytelling. The series often portrays Belle as a singular monster rather than a symptom of larger systemic failures, missing an opportunity to explore the deeper cultural and psychological forces at play. By reducing its narrative to familiar beats of deception, exposure, and collapse, Apple Cider Vinegar becomes more predictable than it should be.

In its final moments, Apple Cider Vinegar struggles to deliver a satisfying emotional payoff. Belle Gibson’s story remains a cautionary tale about the perils of blind trust in influencer culture and pseudoscience, but the series doesn’t push hard enough to elevate itself above other entries in the genre. For all its potential, the show feels as if it, too, has fallen victim to the shallowness it seeks to critique.

Final Verdict

Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar attempts to offer a compelling dive into one of the most shocking wellness scams of the past decade, with Kaitlyn Dever delivering a committed and chillingly effective performance as Belle Gibson. The series effectively recreates the Instagram-era obsession with alternative medicine and holistic healing, showcasing how Belle leveraged a fabricated illness to build a lucrative empire. The show’s visual style, with scrolling comment feeds and carefully curated influencer aesthetics, captures the way social media enables deception at an unprecedented scale.

However, despite its intriguing premise and strong central performance, Apple Cider Vinegar ultimately falls short in delivering a truly incisive or layered exploration of its subject matter. The series struggles with its scattered narrative structure, frequently jumping between timelines and perspectives in a way that often feels more disjointed than revealing. While the show acknowledges that Belle is not an isolated phenomenon but rather a product of an already broken system, it stops short of truly interrogating the deep-seated societal forces that allow figures like her to thrive.

The inclusion of Milla’s storyline provides an interesting contrast, showing what happens when someone wholeheartedly believes in the pseudoscience they promote. Yet, the emotional depth of her arc is somewhat undercut by the script’s tendency to use her more as a foil to Belle rather than a fully realized character with her own journey. Similarly, supporting characters like Aisha Dee’s Chanelle and Mark Coles Smith’s journalist figure offer intriguing entry points into the larger ethical questions surrounding wellness scams, but they aren’t given enough space to develop.

In the end, Apple Cider Vinegar feels like a show that understands its subject’s significance but never quite figures out how to present it in a way that feels fresh or revelatory. It plays out like a standard scammer drama, hitting familiar beats of deception, exposure, and downfall, without the kind of deep thematic examination or razor-sharp social commentary that could have made it truly exceptional. While the series will likely entertain fans of the genre and draw in viewers fascinated by real-life fraud stories, it ultimately lacks the staying power or emotional resonance of the best entries in the scammer canon.