🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation stinks of a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original 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 deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist 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 introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her version of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.