🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this smells like a bad TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose 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 woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains how much better 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 Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival investigators, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.