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“This whole affair smells like a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.