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“The entire situation stinks like a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide 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 may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.