🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.