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“Everything about this smells like a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.