Your Favourite Social Media Psycho Is Again in Killer Sequel ‘Influencers’

Influencer hit Shudder in 2023 after an acclaimed competition run, and its sequel arrives on the horror streamer this week. Influencers follows the persevering with crimes of CW—the monstrous master of social media performed by Cassandra Naud—and whereas it isn’t an origin story, it expands her injury path in fascinating and revealing methods. It’s additionally simply as twisty and thrilling as Influencer, with sufficient gore to nudge CW into slasher-villain territory.

Take notice: you do want to look at Influencer to get the complete advantage of Influencers, nevertheless it’s 90 minutes very effectively spent. The sequel runs barely longer, a needed enhancement because of Influencers’ extra sprawling setting and timeline. Like the primary movie, Influencers waits till almost half-hour in earlier than unfurling its opening credit, providing you with a bit of CW-spawned destruction to sit down with whilst you marvel how within the hell she’s going to prime what you simply noticed.

In actual fact, Influencers provides you two jaw-dropping chunks to ponder proper off the bat. The primary scene reveals a girl having a panic assault as her mobile phone dings message after message, then grabbing a knife and slashing her personal throat. As she bleeds out, the cellphone rings, and it’s “Catherine Weaver” calling. Fascinating. Then we lower to France, the place we discover CW, now going by Catherine… completely happy, smiling, and in a dedicated relationship with the stunning Diane (Lisa Delamar).

Kurtis David Tougher—director of each Influencer films and the solo author of Influencers after co-writing the primary with Tesh Guttikonda—is aware of how a lot this shocks us. Final time we noticed CW, she was stranded on that island in Thailand, wryly grinning as Madison (Emily Tennant), whose against-the-odds survival ended CW’s streak of abandoning victims there to die, stole her boat and sped away in Influencer’s closing moments. How are we now discovering her dwelling in soft-focus romantic bliss, half of a pair making ready to have a good time their first anniversary?

Influencer followers know that ripping the rug out from below the viewers is Tougher’s specialty—particularly with such a diabolical lead character main the cost—so it’s not a spoiler to say CW’s circumstances quickly change; although her affection for Diane appears honest, it’s not sufficient to maintain these sinister impulses from rising up and taking on.

It’s additionally not a spoiler to say that new characters are quickly drawn into CW’s treacherous orbit, and so they’re her favourite varieties of victims: social-media creators too busy taking selfies, curating lives that seem excellent, and growing their follower counts to understand they’ve left themselves open to manipulation and worse by a real psychopath. That’s what occurred to Madison within the first movie; this time round, the unfortunate embrace a condescending Brit performed by Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell in addition to a “manosphere” livestreamer performed by Jonathan Whitesell, alongside together with his bestie Cameron (Letterkenny’s Dylan Playfair) and girlfriend Ariana (Veronica Lengthy).

Are these individuals so irredeemably terrible that they deserve what occurs to them? Influencers nudges you to ponder that whereas additionally making you are feeling repeatedly challenged by who you’re imagined to sympathize with.

As others have noticed, CW is a kind of Tom Ripley determine, and Influencers confidently operates as a riff on Patricia Highsmith’s tales about him. Then there’s the added enhancement of CW being a tech whiz. She will be able to hack into any cellphone or laptop nearly immediately, and she will additionally deep-fake a totally credible rendering of a human being—going far past the primary movie’s Instagram trickery right here. As a part of that, she herself is a digital ghost; we don’t know if “Catherine” and even “CW” is her actual identify, and she or he retains a stash of passports that permit her to modify identities as rapidly as she will steal a brand new one.

Nearly the one factor that ever compromises the chameleonic CW is the one factor that makes her really memorable: the big birthmark on her cheek. Naud was already a savvy casting alternative given her charisma and appearing abilities, however this side of her look brings much more intrigue to CW. Does she hate social media stars as a result of she rejects their insistence on bodily perfection? As within the first movie, it’s by no means mentioned outright, and we hardly ever see CW attempting to hide her most distinguishing characteristic. However much more than it was in Influencer, the birthmark is what makes her stand out. It’s the one identifier everybody remembers about her—the one factor that stops her from being a real ghost.

Whereas CW’s motive stays murky in Influencers, it’s crystal clear why Madison can be part of the sequel. She has some main unfinished enterprise. She might have fought her approach out of the primary movie, however her life was ripped aside within the aftermath. She was cleared of murdering the individuals CW killed in Influencer, however suspicion clings to her—partially as a result of CW’s manipulation of her social media accounts was so skillfully incriminating, but additionally as a result of her story sounds so unbelievable she’s turn out to be a pariah, focused by true crime obsessives and outright stalkers.

So, sure, Influencers can be a revenge story—at her wit’s finish, Madison picks up CW’s path just by googling “lifeless influencer” and connecting the dots. It provides much more juicy drama to a movie that additionally, not by chance, takes place solely in beautiful places lensed to make them look much more like temptingly postcard-perfect trip spots… the place evil lurks simply out of body, ready so that you can let your guard down so it could wriggle its approach into your life.

Influencers streams on Shudder beginning December 12; Influencer is already out there there if it is advisable to catch up.

Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to count on the most recent Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and all the pieces it is advisable to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.