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“This whole affair smells of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic 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 once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably 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 numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.