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“The entire situation reeks like a bad TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.