Interview: “We’re Going to Keep Morphing and Keep Trying to Surprise You” — INFLUENCERS Writer / Director Kurtis David Harder Expands on the First Film After Originally Not Wanting to Make a Sequel

Influencers is the kind of sequel in which the gloves come off. Writer/director Kurtis David Harder not only raises the body count but expands the digital world of influencers, adding more twists and 3D chess played by the franchise’s killer, CW (Cassandra Naud). Every phone in her presence is a deadly tool.

In Influencers, artificial intelligence is another weapon now at CW’s disposal. She continues to steal and kill in Thailand, where she crosses paths with a past mark as well as toxic influencer bros. 

The sequel is another cat-and-mouse horror thriller from Harder, who recently spoke with Daily Dead about introducing new sides of CW, as well as keeping her motivations mysterious.

When you made Influencer, your stance on a sequel was “absolutely not.” What changed your mind?

Kurtis David Harder: For me, if you’re going to make a sequel, there has to be a reason. I really subscribed to when Tarantino talks about what makes a good trilogy or what makes a good sequel—that you kind of need to take everything that worked with the first one and expand on it and have something new.

The first movie was wrapped up in my mind until some of the ideas started to sprinkle in. What really sold me was the set-off point of the second one, where you’re seeing CW in a relationship [in France]. You’re not sure exactly where this takes place in the grand schemes of the timeline.

You also wanted to keep refining ideas you introduced in the first movie. Any examples?

Kurtis David Harder: Yeah, exploring characters from the first one, but also, there were a bunch of sequences. The first one was a tiny film. There were only 11 of us shooting in Thailand, so there were action sequences that we just couldn’t pull off with the means that we had. To come in with a slightly bigger canvas, to be able to prep, to do a bigger fight sequence or some of these other locations that we were hoping to get, that was special.

For CW, how much does she plan for variables? How much is she shooting from the hip when things go awry?

Kurtis David Harder: She’s very good at being on her toes. In terms of how she goes about her plans, it’s very calculated. She’s constantly getting thrown curveballs, and I think that’s what makes it so fun is that you’re on this adventure with her being constantly thrown against the wall. Now she’s kind of trapped and needs to get out. She’s very crafty, but we constantly are putting her in a new box.

What about CW do you want to keep a mystery? What answers didn’t you want to give in a sequel? 

Kurtis David Harder: That’s always a fine balance. Obviously, we wanted to avoid the James Bond villain speech. There is an aspect of the fact that she is a bit enigmatic and in the shadows of exactly how and why and what she truly believes. Where do you actually get the full mask off and see who this person is underneath all these facades that she’s putting on in order to scam these people? We’ve had a lot of conversations about the history in the past, but in terms of allowing the audience to see beyond the veil, it’s important to still keep her mystery of exactly how she pulls all this off.

Like the first movie, the opening credits begin at the end of act one. What about that choice appeals to you?

Kurtis David Harder: It’s just a fun thing where we’re doing these narrative swaps in both films. With the first movie it was this joke of, how long can you stretch a cold open and does that just become part of the movie? It is very much a debate in the first film of whose movie it is and who is really the protagonist.

Coming into this one, there’s a little bit of a cheeky aspect to it, but it’s having fun with that switch-up of saying, okay, this is the movie: it’s actually something different. We’re going to keep morphing and keep trying to surprise you, because modern audiences are so well-crafted at seeing twists or the way that movies are structured. They’ve seen everything. 

Cassandra Naud is excellent in these movies. What do you find most fulfilling about building CW with her? 

Kurtis David Harder: The first Influencer was her first feature film in the leading role. To come back and build on everything that we worked on with the first film, and seeing how much she’s grown as a performer, is super special. It’s fun to take someone that you have this baseline with—a character—and then to throw all of these curveballs and see how someone would react. And having someone who’s already attached as the actor, you’re able to already have that baseline where you’re exploring deeper as opposed to starting over. So I think that was really cool with both of us returning to dive a little deeper.

The scope you achieve with these movies is impressive. How’d you want to widen CW’s world this time?

Kurtis David Harder: I think that lends itself to nature and kind of the ethos that was so integral to what made the first movie work. We made that movie with 11 people. Coming into this one, we had more resources, but I didn’t want to lose what made that first movie work. We added a few more people, but it was the same cinematographer, David Schuurman.

It was a lot of the same producers and we just kept it as a bit of a sliding scale where we had our core group and would add crew members based on what we were doing. If we were in a big club where we had a couple hundred extras, we hired a few more people to help out with the crew side of things.

For the most part, it was still this very small group moving around and traveling around several continents. It’s what makes these movies feel so much bigger than they actually are, in terms of almost treating it more in a documentary sense. We’re just moving around to these different places, being able to get in and out of a location. If you had the full crew, kind of the full circus, it would be impossible.

How do you manage to make screens unnerving in these movies?

Kurtis David Harder: When you’re on a screen, a lot of it has to do with pacing and making sure what you’re showing is not… I think it is more about the plot and the story and what the characters are going through and the why. If you’re going to go to a screen, you better have kind of a specific purpose and be efficient with it.

At this point, can you imagine an Influencer 3?

Kurtis David Harder: We’ll see how this does. There are always ideas. I think what is really cool about these films and why a sequel works is there’s so much to explore about online culture and the way that culture is changing with AI. CW can kind of fit into all these different situations, but we’ll see.

[Spoiler Alert]

It’s a happy ending for CW. She’s finally free from her digital prison.

Kurtis David Harder: It is definitely this return to formality in terms of her arc. Just letting her be completely unleashed is so fun. Seeing the cast just go for it was one of the most satisfying parts of the shoot—seeing how crazy we can get with this finale, which lends itself to the Evil Dead II comparison.

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[Photo Credits: Above photos courtesy of Influencers/Shudder.]

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