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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like 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 utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.