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“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.