🔗 Share this article

“This whole affair smells like a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.