🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation reeks like a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

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 doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. While it is satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.