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“Everything about this reeks of a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.