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“Everything about this reeks of a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. 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 is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.