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“Everything about this stinks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect 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 capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off 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 the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability 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 visit, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. While it is satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled 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 always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.