In 2023, Influencer made io9’s year-end list of the best movies you might have missed, and we’ve continued to recommend it ever since. It’s definitely one you don’t want to know too much about before watching it for the first time—but the title hints at the subject matter, and it’s not a spoiler to say Influencer is a cautionary tale about putting too much of yourself online. You never know who might be paying an unhealthy amount of attention, especially when, say, you’re on a solo vacation in Thailand.
It’s a twist-filled and satisfyingly twisted tale. After a festival run, it streamed on genre platform Shudder, where it built up a following though didn’t quite, ahem, go viral—but today comes news worth 1,000 “likes”: Influencer is getting a sequel! And it’s titled, naturally, Influencers.
Even better, as Deadline reports, Influencers has actually already wrapped. It’s once again from writer-director Kurtis David Harder, and brings back the first film’s memorable Cassandra Naud, with the addition of Georgina Campbell (Barbarian).
This time around, the thrills unfold across southern France; according to Deadline, “the sequel watches as a young woman’s chilling fascination with murder and identity theft sends her life into a whirlwind of chaos. Pic deepens a cinematic universe built around themes of deception, online identity, and the darker sides of curated personas, offering an expanded canvas compared to the original.”
The trade also has a quote from Harder: “With Influencers, I wanted to revisit the themes of control and illusion, but from a new angle—one that’s more seductive, more dangerous, and more unhinged,” said Harder. “It’s a film that plays with perception. Fans of Influencer will feel something familiar beneath the surface, but the real fun is discovering just how deep those connections run.”
Yes, he did indeed promise the sequel is more unhinged than the original, and we can’t wait to see how he pulls that off. Shudder once again picked up the rights in English-speaking countries—there’s no release date yet—and the film will seek international distribution at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
You can (and should) watch 2023’s Influencer on Shudder now.
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