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“Everything about this stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.