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“This whole affair reeks like a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. 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 is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids 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 hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, 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 De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.