🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.