🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.