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“This whole affair smells of a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.