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“Everything about this smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including 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 against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.