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“The entire situation reeks like a bad TV movie,” remarks a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.