🔗 Share this article

“This whole affair stinks like a bad TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off 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 filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based 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 online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists 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 a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.