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“The entire situation reeks of a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless 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 targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.