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“This whole affair smells of a bad TV movie,” states a cynical commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her 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), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to film, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance 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 screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet 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 is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film 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 chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.