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“Everything about this reeks of a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.