The talented Ms. Weaver
Influencer, Kurtis David Harder’s 2022 sleeper, pulled off something trickier than it looks: it was a genuinely fun thriller carrying exactly as much satire as it could hold and not an ounce more. The social media stuff was the scaffolding the story hung on, not a sermon it delivered. That seems simple but is a tough recipe to nail. Plenty of social media and device-centered comedies devolve into either self-parody or a TED talk. (See Status Update for my favorite punching bag on the matter. Or, maybe, don’t.)
Influencers, the follow-up a few years later, doesn’t thread the needle quite so gracefully. It’s a side-grade rather than a upgrade: Harder effectively expands the scope on nearly every dimension — geographically, temporally, emotionally — but loses some of the snap that made the original pop. The charm ultimately survives, though, and the fresh ideas are enough to prevent it from feeling too formulaic and repetitive with the first.
Influencers picks up a couple years ahead of the gotcha ending of the first film: CW (Cassandra Naud) has survived and resurfaced in the south of France. She’s a year into a relationship with Diane (Lisa Delamar) and living something that looks disconcertingly like a real life. This disruption to this tranquility arrives in the form of Charlotte (Georgina Campbell), a British influencer who inadvertently steals the couple’s hotel suite for promotional purposes and then attaches herself to Diane, triggering CW’s jealousy. Elsewhere, Madison (Emily Tennant) has also survived the Thailand business of Influencer, but gets doxxed, publicly doubted, and thoroughly chewed up angry commenters. She starts doing her own detective work on CW.
The big change this time around is that CW now has an interior. Harder builds the film around the notion that, for this anti-heroine, the line between attraction and predation is a blurry one; her past victims literally a “body count.” Her relationship with Diane has tamped down her violent impulses, but with Charlotte in the picture and her past catching up with her, she starts slipping out of her gentle humanity and back into the manipulative, violent work anyway. It’s a smart evolution for the character and for the franchise, and it gives this sequel more of a character arc than the original.
I like this in principle, but it just doesn’t land as well as it should. The inevitable rupture of bliss aims to devastate, but we know CW primarily as a cool killing machine, and the film never fully sells her thaw from the icy behavior of the original. Thus, watching her new, happy life spiraling does not register a big emotional impact. You get the approximate shape of a broken heart, but not much of the ache. Still, I admire the film planting a hook to pull us closer to its lead.
What’s never in question is the consistent assembly, which builds on the look and tempo of the original. David Schuurman’s photography in Bali and France is excellent here: He delivers intoxicating, drone-assisted travelogue gorgeousness, but shot thoughtfully for a thriller, including some long takes and creeping camera moves that go farther than the original in generating dread rather than magazine ad luxe.
Where Influencers gets bogged down is in its structural machinery. The screenplay juggles multiple timelines, a lengthy flashback, and subplots that build toward a frantic climax but feel slow in motion getting there. (I do like the the film once again dropping the title card around the 30 minute mark after a big plot left-turn, setting the first act as a prologue of sorts.) At 110 minutes, this is a baggier film than the original’s lean 92. Even the climax is not so deftly orchestrated this time, leaning more on chaos and bloodbath than the tense finale of Influencer.
The commentary on influencer culture is broader and more garish, too: the secretly-cucked alt-right bro Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), hypocritical trad-wife vlogger Ariana (Veronica Long), and podcasting d-bags are more caricatured than anyone in the first film. At least Harder is aiming at a different target than pretty travel girls this time.
Naud remains the cast highlight. She can pivot from open-faced innocence to flat-eyed menace inside a single shot. The obvious comparison is a social-media-era Tom Ripley. She gets a wider variety of emotions to play here, and she nails most of them, though I occasionally didn’t fully invest in her panic or sadness. Tennant, meanwhile, is solid in transitioning Madison from victim to hunter as the movie progresses. The two have strikingly different screen presences — Naud coiled and watchful, Tennant wide-eyed and vulnerable — and they complement each other better than a straightforward hero-villain pairing would.
Ultimately, Influencers is something of a wash with its tighter, more controlled predecessor: it gains an emotional register and loses some of the hairpin-turn plotting. In this case, a wash is a win. These are two fun, well-built thrillers from a director and a star who both look ready for bigger rooms, and I’d watch a third one tomorrow.
Is It Good?
Good (5/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.