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“Everything about this smells like a bad TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) 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 rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.