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“The entire situation smells of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty 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 Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media 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 near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first 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 somewhere without any devices and see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.