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“This whole affair smells of a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling 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 surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless 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 screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.