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“This whole affair stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology and see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.