🔗 Share this article

“This whole affair stinks like a bad TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director 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) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.