Click The Link Below Dir: Audun Amundsen (13th Floor/Doc Edge Film Review)

The award-winning Norwegian director of  Newtopia and Help, I’ve gone Viral!, Audun Amundsen’s latest documentary Click the Link Below, takes us on a ride down the online rabbit hole inhabited by those hyped up, self-proclaimed business rock stars, who have recently come to be known by the term  ‘contrepreneurs’.

We have all seen their on-line ads, “I made a million dollars in my first month using my foolproof method and you can too, but only you pay me a LOT of money for the secret recipe”.

And in the ultimate piece of marketing genius, should you pay the money and follow the recipe and fail to become an overnight millionaire, well that’s on you, because you must have left out a vital ingredient.

Even though “dumb luck” was deliberately left off the list of the vital ingredients.

Catch 22 but make it marketing.

Amundsen kicks of his journey to the financial promised land by paying a hefty $7,500 to online guru  Akbar Sheikh in exchange for a digital marketing “mentorship” programme that promises to deliver quantifiable results, so long as the mentee follows the prescribed formula. Religiously.

It is testament to how much smoke and mirrors is involved in the business of online coaching that even after watching the film in its entirety, I was still unsure what exactly it was that Amundsen had forked out $7.5k for.

To be fair, so was Amundsen.

‘You should make  the picture of yourself on your website bigger’ is not exactly giving King Solomon a run for his money on the sage advice front.

As part of his investigation the director travels to the US to meet his mentor face to face and interview some colourful characters from the online marketing world.

Russell Brunson the ridiculously youthful-looking ClickFunnels software entrepreneur, has built a following of over a million, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, and popularized the concept of sales funnels (basically a series of landing pages that lead potential customers towards a purchase decision).and has a whole room dedicated to the OG personal development guru Napoleon Hill of “Think and Grow Rich” fame.

Brunson, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also owns tens of thousands of theological tomes and refers to himself as a bibliophile, which sounds much nicer than “book hoarder”.

Perhaps unsurprisingly his rallies have a strong evangelical flavour. What is perhaps surprising is that he appears to be a genuinely nice guy.

As does Sheikh, despite his somewhat (ahem) sheikhy, business premise he comes out of this looking pretty good.

But then, Amundsen doesn’t really push him right to the edge of the envelope here.

Apart from one, somewhat uncomfortable, scene where he gently challenges Sheikh’s business model and gets the reaction that he was most likely looking for. However, even in this interaction it is difficult to dislike Sheikh who appears to genuinely believe in his own “make more, give more” mantra.

And this is where the film fails a little as an expose of get-rich-quick online snake oil snakes. Perhaps because Amundsen is just too nice himself and the most groundbreaking thing about this investigation is the surprisingly heartwarming friendship that develops between him and his primary subject.

In addition to Akbar Sheikh and Brunson, other interviewees include internet business entrepreneurs such as Tai Lopez, self-confessed ‘demotivational speaker’ and best-selling Amazon author ,Mike Winnet, Dan Henry, as well as online life-style and mental health experts such as Gretchen Rubin, Lauren Tickner, Alex Partridge and Robert Waldinger.

Watching Click The Link Below I had that quintessential seller of dreams, Billy Flynn’s, showstopper “Razzle Dazzle” from Chicago playing on my internal jukebox.

“Back since the days of old Methuselah
Everyone loves the big bambooz-a-ler”

“Throw ’em a fake and a finagle
They’ll never know you’re… just a bagel”

The method of delivering the old old flim flam flummox may have gone more high tech, but the circus remains the same.

Jo Barry

• Auckland
  • 12 July 2025 – 7:30pm – The Capitol Cinema
  • 13 July 2025 – 2:15pm – Bridgeway Cinema
• Wellington
  • 17 July 2025 – 8:15pm – Roxy Cinema
• Christchurch
  • 19 July 2025 – 5:45pm – Lumière Cinemas
• Virtual Cinema New Zealand
  • 28 July 2025 – 24 August

Full programme and tickets available at docedge.nz