PopHorror Let's Get Scared
When Influencer released in 2022, it told the story of a twisted friendship between two ladies. One was a popular social media maven who was internally distraught, and the other was a femme fatale who held a personal grudge against…social media mavens. Three years later, we have Influencers, the sequel from the same team behind the original. Let’s see if this new entry can influence us in the same way that the slickly underrated original did.
Influencers was written and directed by Kurtis David Harder (Spiral 2019). It stars Cassandra Naud (It’s A Wonderful Knife 2023, read our review here) as the vengeful and mysterious CW, and Emily Tennant (The Wedding March 2016) as the broken survivor, Madison. CW has somehow escaped certain death on the island she was left on, and she’s got a new life now. She’s happy with her girlfriend in a location that’s far from her troubled past. But her murderous impulses soon overtake her again, sending her quaint new existence spiraling back toward a showdown with her former victim.
Tennant and Naud have great chemistry and both pull from a pretty deep place in Influencers. Tennant’s character is now being threatened and accused of murders that she didn’t commit, and her famed online presence has been wiped from existence. Naud’s CW shows rare emotion after an important loss, and the two find themselves tangled up in a fatal web again.
Much like its predecessor, Influencers is shot in a beautifully isolated location, with the imagery being well photographed and color-graded. This movie ups the violence factor and continues its meta ways in shining a light on the duality of the influencer lifestyle.
While the widening of the world in Influencers may make the pacing a little bit slower, all of the characters still have an interesting layer that keeps you wanting to see their secrets unravel. Influencers is currently available to stream on Shudder.
