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“This whole affair stinks like a bad TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing 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 further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.