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“This whole affair smells like a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.