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“Everything about this stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is 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.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.