🔗 Share this article

“Everything about this smells like a bad TV movie,” states a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story 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 insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow 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 chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour 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, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.