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“The entire situation stinks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly 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 getting to explore posh places 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 ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense 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 tapped into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.