🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this smells like a bad TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders 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 proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.