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“Everything about this smells like a bad 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 bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters 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 which don't feature this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.