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“This whole affair reeks of a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.