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“The entire situation reeks of a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie 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 against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.