“Everything about this reeks of a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.
2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.
This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.
CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?
The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.
Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.
The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.
It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.
Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.
Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.
The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.
A seasoned casino analyst with over a decade of experience in online gambling, specializing in slot machine reviews and player strategy.
