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“The entire situation smells of 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 toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding 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 suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.