🔗 Share this article

“This whole affair stinks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.