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“Everything about this stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving 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 methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.