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“This whole affair reeks like a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is 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.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited 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 ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably inhabit 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 — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.