🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this stinks like a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted 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, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year 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 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 special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

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 exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though 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 lingers even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion 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 means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.