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“Everything about this reeks of a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

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

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.