🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this reeks of a cheap made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media 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 off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology to see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her version of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at 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 deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.