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“This whole affair stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.