🔗 Share this article

“This whole affair smells like a bad TV movie,” states a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, 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, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.