🔗 Share this article

“This whole affair reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.