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“The entire situation smells of a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film 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 lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created 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 functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.