🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation smells like a bad TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.