🔗 Share this article

“This whole affair smells of a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing 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 and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters 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, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching 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 through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring 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 pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.