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“Everything about this smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

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 offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.