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“The entire situation reeks like a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology and see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works 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 and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when 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 for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.