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“Everything about this smells of a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing 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 story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of 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 for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.