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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet 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, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming 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, at least for now.