🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this smells like a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of 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 network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, 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 off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.