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“This whole affair stinks of a bad TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but 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 suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching 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 rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.