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“Everything about this reeks like a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices and see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

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 offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.