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“Everything about this stinks like a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’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, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator 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 is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.