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“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically 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 striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to film, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of online fame. While it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.