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“Everything about this smells of a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.