🔗 Share this article

“The entire situation reeks like a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (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 against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology and see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.