“Everything about this smells of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.
Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene
The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.
This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.
CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?
Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits
The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.
Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.
Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue
The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.
It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.
Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.
Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension
Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, 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 true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.
The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. 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 fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.
