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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.