🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation stinks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling 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 cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, 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 aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, 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 prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.