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“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young 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 Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how 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 hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.