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“Everything about this smells of a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is 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 key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.