🔗 Share this article

“This whole affair stinks like a bad TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, British 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 without any devices and see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. 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 in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.