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“Everything about this stinks of a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting 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 part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) 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 dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability 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 visit, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.