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“This whole affair smells like a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling 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 latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced 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 limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed 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 doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim 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 deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.