I have recently become acquainted with Kurtis David Harder’s Influencer series, watching the 2022 original film and its 2025 sequel, now streaming on Shudder, back-to-back. The Scream franchise is losing its luster, with the next entry seemingly forgoing commentary about the current state of media. Meanwhile, Harder quietly rips off Ghostface’s crown and places it on killer queen CW (Cassandra Naud). This lesbian with an iconic beauty mark deceives, weaponizes her femininity, is a computer whiz, slays enemies, ruins lives, and acts as a conduit to commentary about current influencer culture. She’s a slasher who needs no mask. All of these factors play a part in the first film’s demise of Madison (Emily Tennant), a social influencer CW befriended in Thailand who was abandoned on an island as part of a larger scheme to steal her identity.

In the sequel, CW slowly regresses back to madness, which unintentionally sets off a chain reaction bringing Madison back into the fray. Additionally, the film brings a thoughtful update to its critique of influencer culture, which reorients the discourse to skewering the right-wing crowd.

Set some time after the events of the 2022 film, CW (now known as Catherine) has escaped the island Madison managed to trap her on, beginning anew in Southern France. She’s boo’ed up with a French woman named Diane (Lisa Delamar) and is about to celebrate their one-year anniversary. But then they meet Charlotte (Georgina Campbell), an influencer whose presence and large following get them removed from the hotel they booked in favor of her. Although Charlotte is friendly, she is the epitome of a typical influencer. Making matters worse, she integrates herself into the couple’s plans. But because bad habits die hard for CW, her slasher bone kicks in.

Enter: Madison, whose life took a hit as CW framed Madison for her boyfriend and another influencer’s death. She was exonerated, but nobody believes her claim. When she learns the news about Charlotte, she realizes CW is involved. With the prey now turned predator (but, like, in a Nancy Drew way), Madison is out on the hunt for justice. By circumstance in Southern France, she’s approached by Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), an abrasive, filterless men’s rights Twitch streamer feeding into incel culture. Despite having a longtime right-wing influencer girlfriend, Ariana (Veronica Long), Jacob flirts with Madison, who rebuffs him. He enlists himself to help her find CW, with his own agenda. Coincidentally, she appears the next day, CW learning Madison has entered her orbit again. Now having two eyes on her, CW tries to use her signature skillset against this new game of cat-and-mouse.

Influencers (2025) widens the concepts, scope, characters, and horror elements of Influencer (2022) to a new and exciting level. The film’s set pieces, European locations, and unsettling thriller elements are characterized by a slicker gleam. Harder replicates the film’s structural format to the same strong precision, with the first 30 minutes acting as a tense prologue before a late yet effective title drop.

This time around, the shifting centralization in its half-hour is on CW. Harder surprises us by giving CW more depth in her sympathetic romantic side while keeping his ace card secret, cheekily not revealing how she even got off the island. He’s more occupied with deepening his killer’s psyche in her attempts to maintain her idyllic lesbian romance and her inner struggle to not let faux and annoying influencers let her homicidal freak flag fly. Harder’s skill in establishing this domino effect through a Scream-meets-Killing-Eve setup is captivating, as it enables the sins of CW’s past to resurface very organically. When Influencers shapes up as a sequel with Madison’s reentry, the new cat-and-mouse format on display results in a more entertaining and thrilling follow-up. Emily Tennant embraces a final-girl-in-sequel persona, her Madison now serving as the predator to CW’s prey.

Between a devious serial killer and a fueling couple who operate in the manosphere and right-wing media, Harder makes it so cathartic in the former’s quest to take down the latter.  However, the fun does get upended with the new pawns on their shared chessboard, acting as a blatant yet well executed commentary on the current influencer media landscape.  Whereas the previous one examined general fauxness, this one focuses on the exploitative aspects of it all, especially from the omnipresent manosphere and alt-right consumers, as Jacob schemes to use Madison and CW’s conflict to raise his profile. Jacob and Ariana are enticing characters and make for a prepare-for-trouble-and-make-it-double toxic couple, sometimes surprisingly subversive. However, they do take up far too much screentime, particularly considering the sequel is nearly two hours, as opposed to the original’s 90-minute runtime. Moreover, at times, the writing and focus become more disorganized, especially with its new varying elements going on, the pacing slightly clunky.

With Influencers, star Cassandra Naud proves this is her series to carry, and she delivers again with remarkable grit, strength, and, oddly enough, humanity. Through her cruel yet  deliciously menacing portrayal, Naud cements herself as one of the best unsung slasher icons of the 21st century. As CW goes on a slow burn descent into madness, hitting her old habits, mostly weaponizing her femininity that once worked to deceive Madison, Naud captivates even further. She brings a stronger confidence and an even campier portrayal, especially against Tennant, as their character’s beef is on newfound equal ground. Her colder stares and spontaneous violent movements lend to suspense, and yet she is still rendered with a humanistic zeal that makes you want to root for her in her quest to outwit her opponents and knock influencer culture down a peg, one “cancer,” as she describes, at a time.

All of these elements combine to create another wild, crazy, gory, and enjoyable ride that, despite occasionally being too long and awkwardly paced, is incredibly entertaining and clever. It is definitely a biting social commentary slasher franchise more perceptive in its critique of digital social media culture than anything else within the horror landscape right now.

Influencers is now streaming on Shudder.

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