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“The entire situation reeks like a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices and see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. While it is gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.