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“Everything about this reeks of a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her version of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows 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, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.