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“This whole affair stinks of a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly 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 functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. 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 doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.