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“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster during 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 the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film 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 provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.