🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (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 lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other 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. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.