🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy 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 exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.