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“This whole affair stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.