🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this smells like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however 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 surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling 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 genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.