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“The entire situation smells of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

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

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.