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“This whole affair stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of the events, including 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 chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of 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 the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.