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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. But his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

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 movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge 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 does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.