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“The entire situation smells like a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.