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“This whole affair smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.