🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation smells of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.