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“This whole affair smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.