🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this smells like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (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 lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour 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 of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.