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“The entire situation reeks like a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.