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“Everything about this smells of a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but 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 is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, 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, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless 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 screed against the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life 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 should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.